


If You Come Around

by leslielol



Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Injury Recovery, Marshal Family, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 03:56:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6499846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Winona had left when she meant to? </p><p>Raylan recovers from a GSW with a little help from his friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> What do you know! That returned interest in old projects didn't stop with just the one!
> 
> I mean for this little story to focus on the trio. It takes place after Raylan sustains a gunshot wound in the season two finale, and will continue through his otherwise unseen recovery at the start of season three. There will be heart to hearts! Ice cream! Booze! And all those pesky feelings.

Pain sparked Raylan’s return to consciousness. He returned to the table shared by Mags Bennett, set with deadly helpings of Apple Pie moonshine. She was spilled over the table sure as her poisoned drink, unmoving, gone. 

Raylan could only summon up a feeling of relief that it hadn't been Loretta’s hand that felled her before he found himself drifting again. The pain in his side was beginning to manifest itself in his mind, and from there set about rattling his chest and buckling his limbs. He sensed a new presence in the room, and would have guessed it for Death itself if he hadn't recognized the voice and placed it elsewhere.

"She looks dead," Tim said. _Conversationally,_ somehow. 

"She is." 

"You kill her?" Tim asked, his tone unchanging even as he bent slightly to help Raylan stand. 

The room was awash in dull reds and browns. Raylan wondered if poor decorating choices were to blame, or if his vision was swimming.

His rifle twisted around to rest longways against his back, Tim’s hands were free. With them, he secured a careful hold around Raylan’s middle, and pressed a steadying hand high on his front. His entire presence transformed itself from one of action to one of protection, and he knew better than to allow Raylan to dictate the level of care. They moved together slowly, Tim’s performance dedicated to the sole task of keeping Raylan upright. 

The arm slung around his shoulders was limp, and Raylan had a sleepy-sounding voice to match.

"You know, Tim, I don't do that near as much as you think." 

“Yeah, but you hold your own.”

They passed through the broken-in doorway and crossed the front lawn, populated as it was with the dead. The toe of Raylan's boot found Doyle Bennett’s shoulder. The bullet wound placed clean between his eyebrows had all the makings of a signature. 

“You ain't so bad, yourself.”

Their paced slowed to a crawl and Tim felt prompted to ask, “You gonna keep talking, or pass out again?”

Raylan did not answer so much as perform, going slack in Tim's grip. EMTs rushed the pair and recovered Raylan into an awaiting ambulance. Tim was met by Rachel and the two hung back, playing at onlookers while Art took his rightful place by Raylan’s side. The doors shut and the vehicle pulled away from the bloodbath that had all but ended the Bennett family line.

“He's gonna be fine,” Tim told Rachel in a voice that was at least firm where it lacked in confidence. “He wouldn't shut up, just a second ago.”

“A second ago,” Rachel echoed coolly, “When he was conscious.” 

Despite the flashing lights and screaming sirens, their pursuit of the ambulance made for a quiet ride. 

\- 

Raylan was out of the woods--out of surgery--when Winona arrived, a State Trooper right at her heels. Rachel spotted her first, signaled Art. They exchanged words, with Winona trying to reach those she hadn’t wanted to say--couldn’t say, even, to Raylan, that morning when she’d finally decided to end it. 

Her heels clicked and the fussy bow at the neck of her blouse danced as she made her way past the string of Deputies holding vigil and into Raylan’s hospital room. It was a needless show, because the fantasy had long been shattered. Her tardiness was one thing, wholly forgivable, but the BOLO was well and truly another. That it took the Staties to find, collect, and deposit her at her ex-turned-lover’s bedside spoke for itself: she did not want to be here. 

Rachel had the good mind to keep her head down and spare Winona the feeling of being a sideshow spectacle. Tim hadn’t the mind, and spared her nothing. He knew more than Rachel the things Raylan had done for her--from covering up her crimes to running Gary off. The least she could do, Tim figured, was pretend she loved Raylan just a little while longer. Just until the one hole in him cleared, and there was space yet for a new one. 

Winona sat with Raylan for a time, talked until he was no longer lucid, and held his hand a little longer after that. She emerged from the room brushing tears from her face. 

Art had scattered most of those gathered, but Winona still felt as though she'd been met with a firing squad.

“I was on my way to my sister’s,” she said, her gaze steadily meeting those of Art, Rachel, and Tim. She added firmly, “He doesn't need to know that.” 

Their collective silence was a weight deficit in the conversation, and Winona felt compelled to fill it up, flood the moment with the kinds of assurances she’s supposed to _want_ to make.

“I don't have keys to his hotel room,” she said. Nevermind that she’d purposefully left them on the side table when she’d packed up the last of her things and gone. “He’ll need a change of clothes…”

“We can do that,” Rachel offered in a practiced, gentle tone. Her colleagues knew she wasn’t offering; it should be a subordinate, a rookie. In any other set of circumstances--if Winona’s very presence did not demand confidentiality--the first blank face in a Marshal’s jacket would be fed the task, no problem. Instead, it came down to the three of them.

As it was, Rachel wasn’t punching up. 

Art clapped Tim on the back. At least in this circle, he was as rookie as they came. 

“I know where it’s at,” Tim volunteered. (Later, Rachel would repeat his words back to him in the same hollowed-out tone and tease him, asking, _Do you always offer aid to grieving significant others like you’re waving off directions to a bathroom?)_

“I’d like to go,” Winona stipulated. Given the past several hours spent tracking her down, she amended, “With you. To the hotel.”

The words themselves had all the shattering failure of bone between her teeth.

Tim only nodded, took the first step, and led the way.

They hadn't yet cleared the hallway before Winona spoke again, her words tight, point succinct. “Was he about to get shot?”

Tim frowned and answered before he could think better of it: “He _was_ shot.”

“Was he about to be killed?” Winona pressed, sheer desperation causing her voice to crack. “Because he's brushing the whole thing off, but everyone's here, and I _know what that means.”_

Tim glanced at her sideways, saw that she was holding each of her arms with the opposite hand, as if she was cold. But neither forearm graced her midsection; rather, she dutifully kept an inch of space there, an invisible place marker. Tim remembered, then, that Winona had long known this life--not just her husband running into dangerous situations and catching the spray, but others, too. She understood that all the waiting, the quiet camaraderie punctuated by the same tired jokes about bad coffee _meant something._

He realized this was territory he wasn't so familiar with, himself. These kinds of gatherings only ever happened after the fact. He glanced back down the hallway, hoping to find Rachel and--shit. What? Signal for aid?

His efforts didn't go unnoticed, and Winona continued, fiercer still, “And I'm asking _you,_ ‘cause you're the shooter, right? Raylan’s said. He's said you don't miss.”

Tim didn't know how _not_ to say that Raylan could have very easily been killed, that his play for time may have saved him, but only as much as Doyle Bennett’s desire to loom over the man, to hurl one last taunt had done the same. Raylan wasn't in a position to time his experience out, and Tim only knew what he had seen for himself: the dust settling, Doyle making his move, raising his gun, and Raylan--

Raylan, bleeding on the ground, saying nothing.

If Tim was half-a-heartbeat slow with his shot, it was only for waiting for Raylan to attempt his last words. Thinking on it now, Tim supposed he was extending a courtesy. 

Brushing against his side as they walked down the hall, down the stairwell, through the lobby and into the car park, Winona seemed eager for Tim to make her point. 

“There was a guy,” Tim allowed, “Meaning to finish the job.” He steeled his voice into a tone for giving orders, said coolly, “He never got close.”

It was true enough, and answered Winona’s question of intent. Tim hardly felt like he was lying, and he sounded as sure as anything that Raylan was never in any danger beyond the stray shot he’d sustained. It stood to reason that at least the threat to his life was unintentional. 

Winona had led them to her car. 

“Is that an estimation of your skill set, or are you attuned to divine intervention?”

“Little of both.” 

Tim didn’t argue about driving, and kept his mouth shut with respect to the mess made of the backseat: Winona's whole life, swept up from under Raylan's nose and packed into suitcases and boxes.

Winona didn’t ask any more questions, so Tim didn’t find cause to speak at all. They skirted around the downtown area, Winona aiming to avoid the stop-and-go headache of traffic lights on every block. Raylan’s motel was a straight shot through, but Winona’s route took them well outside the city before circling back around, drawing closer to the lights and development. 

“So. Uh. You live around here?” It was the first either had spoken since leaving the hospital, and though he’d been expecting another attempt, the question caught Tim by surprise. Worse, he let it show, answered like it did. 

“Around the highway? No.” 

Winona flexes her fingers around the wheel. “Okay. I was just--wondering. You know. Because me and Raylan saw you at that bluegrass bar off the interstate. Thought maybe you lived… off the interstate.”

She finished in a huff, like the fact that she had to explain herself made the question doubly stupid.

“I remember that.” Tim said, offering no further explanation. 

“We-- _I_ didn’t want us… going public.”

“That’s fine. Seemed that way.” 

“It’s not fine,” Winona insisted, and this--she _hated_ this. It was all the junk-forgiveness that surged through her heart in a moment personal weakness. Raylan had done nothing to earn it; he hadn't changed. Her sympathy and regret blossomed in response to a bland compromise--Raylan's survival in the face of certain death--not principled action. And after a lifetime to knowing better, Winona was again taken by these instincts, and led down a path towards her own destruction. “Raylan’s a good man.” 

She must have noticed that she sounded like she was trying to convince herself of that fact, because she went quiet for a time. 

“It was after that pregnant inmate escaped, right? And you two… Well, _you._ Shot a man in the head.”

It didn't surprise Tim to hear the deed put so bluntly, and he wasn't even put off by Winona as its presenter. Nothing he did in his professional life was said in a whisper, and that's how he liked it. There was no forgiving anything. What concerned him is the level of detail she was party to--not only the headshot, but the life at stake. _Lives_ at stake. 

“He told you about that?”

He sounded angry. He wasn't, not really. 

Winona seemed to recognize the tone as one of cautious interest. “It used to bother me when Raylan wouldn’t talk about work. I guess we got into the habit, then, of talking too much about it.” Her stare hardened. “I come away knowing all the gorey details.” 

Tim watched her drive, saw that she was focused and mindful, her eyes only drifting away from the road in search of their exit. Her face--the hard line of her mouth, the wetness on her cheeks--glowed less and less under each passing streetlight, and she seemed to fade away into the story she was telling. 

“So--that night. We already had plans to go out and see--Dave Alvin, right? I asked him… Why don't we just stay in, relax?” She was still answering Tim’s question--yes, _Raylan told her about that,_ now what was she going to do about it? “He said no, he wanted to go. At the very least,” a wistful smile broke through this the grim expression on Winona’s face, “He wanted to watch me get ready.”

Tim couldn't help but crack a smile; Raylan was smooth like that. He delivered age-old lines like he was the first. 

“So we went. And it was fun, going on a date, like we'd used to. But he gets so _impulsive,_ you know? After--” she bit her lip to stall her tongue. She was a handful of words away from admitting the sex she had with Raylan after he’d been involved in a shooting was some of the best she’d ever had, and it wasn’t so rare an occasion. Tim, who wore a considering kind of expression, had her figured out. “That ain’t weird, is it?”

Tim cleared his throat, and Winona wondered if she’d made him embarrassed. 

“It makes a certain amount of sense.” 

“Anyway. He started in on how we should tell people, how I should divorce Gary…” 

Tim remembered it had looked something like an argument. 

“...And then I saw you, and I just--I didn't want him to get his way.”

She took the exit and they pulled into the motel parking lot, right ahead of Raylan's room. Winona remained at the wheel, key still in the ignition, staring at the stringy curtains in the window. She'd had plans to change them.

Tim left and retrieved a key to the room from the service desk; whether he’d flashed his badge or simply asked, Winona didn’t know. The place wasn’t so reputable that she couldn’t imagine the latter being an issue. When Tim returned, she'd finally drawn herself out of the car. The keys felt hot in her hand, like she'd pulled them raw from the engine itself. 

Tim opened the door for her in a way she offhandedly recognized as polite. When she stood in the room for the first time since leaving it all behind that morning, though, she felt as if he'd pushed her. 

Winona moved on autopilot to the closet, her expression searching. She collected a few things--two Henley shirts and a pair of jeans, underwear and socks from a dresser drawer--folded them, then sat on the end of the bed. Tim had gone to the bathroom and back, collected Raylan’s shaving kit. 

He didn't know what was next--if Winona planned to move a few of her things back in and intended for either his silence or his help, or if she needed time, here. Space, or as much as Tim could allow in the small living quarters. He hung back, his shoulder settling comfortably against the doorframe. It wasn't so long ago that he'd been in here, himself, trying to keep an eye on Raylan but getting outsmarted for his troubles.

He thought of the great, sprawling home Winona shared with Gary. Its multiple guest rooms, fine leather couches, and renovated kitchen spoke to elegant tastes and big hopes--for a family, one day.

And then there was here, Raylan's derelict motel room, where Winona chose to spend her time. 

A stray lock of hair fell out of place, and as Winona moved to tuck it back behind her ear, she stalled. Then her hand flew to cover her mouth as she choked out a shaken sob. 

She lost herself to a string of them, each progressively quieter than the last until she drew in a silent breath. With her eyes pinched shut to stall any tears, Winona did not see Tim’s approach. He sat on the end of the bed, close enough to merit being beside her, though he maintained a space between them that was not once breached by so much as a breath, let alone a hand.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she croaked. Her voice was stranded, drawn far out on a limb by Raylan’s own lure. She'd followed him through postings across the Midwest and down to Miami, but when things fell apart she found herself thinking strategically, and making a move towards the place Raylan swore to never call home again. 

She'd made a new life for herself, something she could be proud of. But Winona knew the second Raylan turned up--wry smile peeking out from under the drawn brim of his hat--that she was poised to lose everything. By the end, she'd be gladly throwing it all away. 

“This is what happens,” Winona said. “This is why I left him in the first place. I love the man, I do. But _I can’t do this,_ not anymore. I’m not made for this, you know? And Raylan… He doesn't make it easy.”

Though she never once turned and addressed Tim directly, Winona felt compelled to make her case to him.

“Sounds like something to talk about with Raylan,” Tim said, and was a breath away from adding, _And never, ever with me._ He tried to imagine Rachel in this situation and, figuring her for a more no-nonsense, tough-love approach, went that route himself. As soon as he saw his opportunity, he’d return Winona to the hospital, palm her car keys back into her hand, and leave the rest to fate. 

It seemed an easy enough prospect, half an hour ago. Winona was cracking at the seams now, leaving Tim with the distinct impression he'd have to gather her up. 

“If I stay… Christ. I’ll be looking at him every day thinking, now? How about now? Can I go?” She swept her hair back from her face and sat a little straighter. She could see both her and Tim's reflection in the mirror opposite the bed. Her eyes were red, her mouth pinched, the collar of her blouse all askew. The hand she brought to loosen the knot didn't shake. 

The two strips of fabric hung loose and exposed her throat. 

Finally, she could breathe.

“How long before he’s better, do you think?”

Gone was the woman overtaken by grief; Winona's question piggybacked on nothing shy of intent. The prospect alone caused Tim's gut to clench; Winona didn’t need to plot an escape, much less pepper him with questions on how to see it through. He felt a surge of undue animosity, and for one terrible second Tim saw himself making clear to her what he'd done so that Raylan might live to see her another day.

It wasn't fair to think about it that way, Tim knew. Winona didn't have to appreciate his skill, and Raylan's fate shouldn't have shit to do with it, neither. The fact that he'd killed a man did not need qualifiers. It was what it was, and Tim knew he'd never do anything less.

He was sharp with his answer all the same, because his honeyed southern drawl couldn't mask that much. 

“If you want to take off, maybe doin’ so before he can stand up and give chase is an idea worth considering.”

Winona left the bed, folded her arms across her chest and stood before Tim. The grace and silence through which she moved confined it all into one smooth motion. Tim felt dwarfed by this, an otherwise simple gesture with the dizzying effect of a bold new supremacy. Sitting on the bed didn't help, but Tim had the distinct feeling Winona could always loom herself so thoroughly over another person--like a collapsing building, she brought certain death. 

Winona said, “Raylan's right, you are an asshole.” Then, her sharp expression fell. As much as she stood _over_ the man who'd likely saved her ex-husband's life, she stood before him. 

Maybe she could make him understand. 

“I’m pregnant.”

She saw Tim's gaze flit to her belly before meeting her eyes. He looked concerned, like she'd just told him it was his.

“Oh. Shit.” Winona supposed that was about as eloquent as she expected from a friend of Raylan’s. “He know?”

“We… we were gonna try again.” Winona dropped her arms, hugged herself because attention in that department seemed to be lacking. Tim stood, then, and awkwardly extended a hand to her shoulder. “I just heard how ridiculous that sounds. Oh, _fuck.”_ She covered her face again, embarrassed for what she had said, what she had hoped for. “That’s it--I’m sorry.” Winona threw off Tim's arm and looked him dead in the eye. “You’ll tell him I’m sorry.” 

Unlike her move to confront him, every word out of her mouth dropped like a tree trunk, blistered by flashfire and weak at the start, but still heavy in the middle.

“Uh, I think he’d appreciate hearing it from you. Winona--!” 

She moved faster than Tim could speak. She was out the door, in the driver’s seat, peeling out of the gravel-strewn lot before Tim could think to--what? Talk her down? _Grab her?_

If someone was running from him, Tim only ever did one thing nowadays. 

He didn't have his sidearm. Raylan would kill him if he'd so much as _moved_ to pull it, anyway, even if only to make a point. Shooting the tires out from under her car was as fool a thing Tim could imagine, and he'd very nearly done it without a second thought. That he couldn’t make her stay any more than Raylan could hope to wasn’t so much of a surprise in hindsight; it was a losing battle from the start. 

He shook his head, called himself _some kind of motherfucking dumb motherfucker_ under his breath, and made the only sensible move. He pulled his phone from his pocket instead, stood in the doorway and watched Winona drive away as he waited for an answer. 

Tim got Rachel on the second ring.

“She’s running again. Should… Do I stop her?” A noise in the motel room stole away his attention, but Tim saw it was only the shaving kit having fallen from the bed and onto the small, discarded pile of clothes Winona had chosen for Raylan. He turned his gaze back to the road, spied the rounded tail lights on her car. 

“Rachel this should not happen on my watch. Stop _laughing.”_ Tim watched until the car veered left for the interstate and disappeared. 

_“Shit.”_

-

Tim returned to the room, collected what Winona had left behind. Her cell phone was on the bed, too, and Tim didn’t spare a moment’s doubt as to whether it was intentionally abandoned or not. Winona had ditched a Marshal and made a getaway in her own vehicle, and neither task was some unseemly stroke of luck. Her choices were simple.

Tim supposed he could sympathize, some.

He didn’t linger in the motel. He found an empty grocery bag that smelled like oranges and piled everything in, raided the mini fridge and then sat outside at a patio table under the small awning, a cold beer in hand. The night was clear and stars were spilled across the sky, but Tim couldn’t see them for the awning, and didn’t bother looking, anyway. 

Tim knew he’d have a story for Rachel when she arrived. He’d already resolved to tell her everything in the vain hope that maybe she could explain it to him. 

So he was surprised when, after picking his ass up, she’d stopped him two minutes into the sordid tale, citing that it was Raylan’s business and she shouldn’t know about it.

“Right, sure, _me neither._ ” Tim was already missing the beer he’d had to chug so as not to sully Rachel’s car with an open bottle. “If’n I had the luxury of that position, I’d take it.”

“Luxurious me, then.” Rachel flexed her hands on the wheel. “He’s going to ask--eventually--and you’re going to have to answer him. Try about be kind about it, huh?”

Tim frowned and weighed his options. “Counterpoint: he doesn’t ask and I never answer. Is he still unconscious?”

Rachel smirked, a welcome deviation from the night’s grim-faced resolve. “Do you really think you’re that lucky?”

Tim dropped the matter until they’d returned to the hospital, checked on Raylan’s progress, and resolved to spend a few more thankless hours haunting the halls. There was a flare of activity when concern rose over the wellbeing of his left kidney, but settled thereafter back into the low buzz of unease that permeated the whole building. Tim found himself eyeing the air ducts, as if they should be suspect. 

It was a quarter past four when the thought struck him that if he didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news, there was only one other option.

He pushed off the lavender-painted wall of the hospital corridor, said simply, “I’m gonna go.”

“Oh yeah?” His speaking stirred Rachel from a decidedly unfulfilling state of rest, something akin to sleep trapped in purgatory.

“Got to make my own luck.”

She seemed to understand him, if the weary expression was enough to go on. 

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she warned. “Do I need to tell you twice?”

“Tell you what, I’ll give you a call when I find her, and you can give it another shot.” Though his hands were tucked in his jacket pockets, one readily clenching his car keys, Tim found cause to stall. He studied Rachel, realizing that he'd be leaving her alone to the miserable task of awaiting ever-abysmal news and managing expectations. The hand that found her shoulder was immediate, the gesture altogether more natural than his night's earlier attempt. 

“Hey.”

“Go,” Rachel said, her mouth twisting itself into something small and angry, an undeserved scar. For whatever it was worth, Tim would feel more useful out on the road, not scuffing the linoleum floors with his boots. She wished she'd thought of it, first. Rachel laughed uneasily, joked, “We’ll make it three times, just to be safe. Don't do anything stupid.”

Tim squeezed her shoulder. For all the sentiment passed through Raylan like a summer breeze, maybe Rachel had odds on her side, and it'd hit Tim like the full force of winter, and he'd know reason when he saw it. 

It couldn't hurt, anyway. 


	2. Chapter 2

There was screaming down the corridor, sealed away in a corner room that stood at the exact intersection of Raylan’s hallway and the coffee and vending machines.

Rachel listened to it as her cup filled to the top. A night’s experience taught her the precise moment to draw it back before it spilled over and burned her hand. There was no managing the wailing, though. 

It was the dull scream of a small body who did not yet understand pain. 

Rachel glared at it uselessly. 

Some of the Marshals commented on the screaming--nothing more than a murmured _”yikes”_ \--but what unnerved Rachel was the conspicuous absence of a complimenting piece of noise: the constant coo of a parent, as if peace could be willed. 

Hospital staff had moved Raylan out of the ICU to make space for some other torn body. His new room was very much the same, save for being less crowded with machinery. There was a window, too, and a love seat positioned beneath it where Rachel spent part of the morning, curled and asleep. It was her intention to return there, maybe split open a year-old magazine and await Raylan's awakening, as though it was some long-fabled event. 

But the door was cracked open and her seat, occupied. 

Raylan was awake.

Rachel did not doubt he used his first conscious moment to ask after Winona. His second, to ask again when he was denied an answer. 

Art was sat in the overstuffed chair. He had it angled towards Raylan's bed in a way Rachel neither felt compelled nor permitted to do while she’d sat there; Raylan wasn't her charge. She could tell from their positioning--the use of Art’s hands and Raylan's growing frustration--that the Chief Deputy had aim on putting it off as long as he could, denying Raylan a clear cut explanation for Winona's absence in favor of securing his side of things for the coming onslaught of paperwork.

Rachel sipped her coffee in the hallway. Art could handle Raylan's impatience better than most; she'd wait this one out. An incoming phone call--buzzing in the loose pocket of her Marshal’s slicker--would suffice. She answered it but couldn’t get a word out before--

“I found her,” Tim said, sounding anxious. Rachel took a fast procession of steps to distance herself from Raylan's room, as if he might overhear their conversation, somehow. It was impossible--doubly so, given that Tim was doing all of the talking. “I don’t--this is stupid. I wish you’d told me twice.”

“I did,” Rachel reminded him. She could imagine him sat out in his vehicle, parked and positioned out of sight, using all the training he had to, what? _Stalk a woman?_ They'd shared a bizarre kind of sympathy on Raylan's behalf the night before. In the light of day, it looked like what it was: a paper thin attempt to right a perceived slight on behalf of a man who-- _still_ \--knew nothing of it. 

Rachel set her coffee down on the nearest windowsill and pinched the bridge of her nose with her free hand. 

“I thought she’d be looking for exactly this opportunity,” Tim said. He sounded small, his voice tinny and distant, and Rachel supposed that's where both their heads had been. They'd simultaneously conjured up and accepted some grand estimation of the desirability for Raylan's company, and then hoisted it all upon Winona's shoulders. Her nerves sated, she wandered back towards Raylan's room.

She heard Tim sigh and say, “She's just at her sister's place. Seems happy.” 

Rachel almost didn't hear him. Her attention was trained on Raylan, who couldn't sit up save for lifting his head, but was still giving Art the hardest look he could pull together. His frustration with Art’s continued silence was profound, and Rachel knew any moment would be the last that Raylan lived in ignorance.

He was animated, speaking to Art with some force when he went sheet white. Rachel watched from across the room and out the door as Raylan's eyes rolled back like they were floating loose in a fishbowl. She felt her insides twist at the sight of what she instinctively knew to be a precursor to death. Never mind that Raylan's vitals were strong, his breathing normal, his prospects positively sunny despite the caliber of bullet that tore through his flesh at close range; for one moment, Rachel believed she'd witnessed Raylan's end. 

And she was struck by how quiet it was.

But rather than spill onto his pillow, unconscious or worse, Raylan regained himself under a strained expression and a hand curled towards his middle. Rachel’s mind likewise rebounded, and she found herself marveling over how much pain he must be in, and how much more there was to come. There was some comfort in the trade-off: Raylan wouldn't succumb to his injuries, but he'd damn well live to feel them.

There was a voice in her ear and she remembered having Tim on the line, probably staked out behind a hedge, feeling ever more the shitheel as he shadowed Winona. 

“Forget it,” she told Tim. “Just get back here, okay?”

“Roger that,” Tim said, eager to take the order.

Rachel ended the call and rapped her knuckle on the door, then opened it and stuck her head in. “Chief?” 

-

Art didn't look well. His face was thrown into distortion under the mealy hospital lighting--his sharp eyes made dull, shadows clinging to his face to draw a frown into profound depths. There had been a time, around six that morning, when his wife Leslie stopped by and attempted to bring him home for a few hours. She ended up waiting alongside him, pinched into an uncomfortable plastic chair in a waiting room. They'd spoken quietly in low tones, which put the topic of conversation solely in one place. For all the good that did him, Art was still at a loss. 

“I don’t know how to tell him,” he said. Rachel, at least, could bear his failures. In the back of Art’s mind he knew this for more than a nod towards her good judgment; these problems would one day be hers. He needed to prepare her. 

Somehow, Rachel's immediate response did not surprise him.

“I will.”

“Rachel,” he sighed, a shred of laughter dying on its way out. “This ain’t on you. If anyone, it’s on Tim.”

“I want to tell him,” Rachel insisted.

Art rubbed a hand over his bald head, let it rest comfortably at the base of his skull. He studied Rachel, realized her offer wasn't really an offer at all. “Well shit. I’ve never known you to be malicious, but death does strange things to people, I suppose.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “No one’s dead.”

“You haven’t seen him all brokenhearted,” Art reminded her. He’d shouldered Raylan through the divorce, a miserable couple of months for which death conjured up a kind of relief. Raylan sure as hell went seeking it, dropping his teaching post and returning to the field quick as he did.

“It's just…” The words spilled out of her faster than she’d thought them up. “I think I know a thing or two about it.”

Rachel pursed her lips, and more than she wished she hadn’t said it, she wished it wasn’t true. 

She did know something about leaving a lover, a husband. She knew the necessity and the cost. Maybe Tim even realized it before her, when he called, sounding so twisted up and ashamed by the thing he'd designated as work, thinking it was anything but personal, anything but tangible. 

Rachel had put so much of herself into disavowing that part of her life, it hardly seemed real anymore. 

Art sighed and felt the hand resting on his neck grow heavy. He let it fall to his side in defeat.

“One of these days,” he said, “I'm treating you all to therapy. Just got to find the right GroupOn.”

-

“Art still on his imaginary phone call?”

Raylan got the line off quick, but Rachel didn’t answer for it. She stood at the foot of Raylan’s bed, neither taking a seat nor Raylan’s hand, because she as Rachel saw it, she was delivering an answer, not news. 

Because, not seeing her face the moment he woke up? Asking after her to no avail? The notion _had_ to be there, buzzing just under the surface of Raylan’s skin. 

When she spoke, Rachel felt as though she was lancing him. 

“Listen. Winona’s not coming to visit again. She took off.” Rachel took a short breath, suddenly feeling starved for it. “Twice, now. First when you were shot, we had a bitch of a time tracking her down. And again,” she opened her hand to gesture towards the room, and that fact that Raylan only had her for company.

Rachel spared Tim the mention that Winona had gone off on his watch. 

She watched as Raylan’s lips formed an “o” and then parted--a soundless start to an unnecessary _what?_ He struggled a moment in an attempt to sit up and bear this information head-on. His hands couldn’t find traction against the sheets and he only seemed to tread water in a sea of white. 

Finally, he stopped. He was quiet. And to Rachel's relief--itself unexpected and felt with profound intensity--he did not seem confused. Reality settled into his features in deep lines that overtook the tiny aggravations of an angry man. Raylan was beginning to understand. 

Knowing better than to ask the kind of questions Rachel wouldn't have an answer for--Why? Where'd she go? Did she say anything? _Why?_ \--he found his way to something, saying only, “Why are you telling me this? As opposed to Art.”

Rachel gave him a smile Raylan was relieved to see was _fond_ in nature, not pitying. “Well, you never listen to Art.”

There was nothing about her own history that Rachel wanted to tie to Raylan’s, so he did not hear the more nuanced explanation had Rachel shared with their Chief. She liked to think she wouldn't hide it, should Raylan ask. 

“She's gone,” Raylan said, slow, like he meant to find that Rachel had somehow misspoken. 

“She is. I suppose she could come back ‘round again. You two seem the type for that kind of thing.” Rachel commanded herself towards gentle, a thing that was not naturally in her wheelhouse. Like patience, it had to be learned. 

“Circling one another. Colliding,” Raylan said, and for however purposefully light he angled his tone, there were threads of misery woven through it. “I'm starting to think maybe that's just me.”

Rachel nodded absently. She remained standing, a ghostly vision at the end of his bed too-late with its warning. 

Helplessly, Raylan said, “We weren’t even fighting.”

The reasoning was hollow, a bone sucked dry of its fatty insides. That Winona wasn't expressly angry with him meant nothing; there were plenty of reasons to leave him, each as valid as the next. They mounted one another and became a formidable landmark of Raylan's own failures and shortcomings. He left like he ought to charge a fee to come witness it all, sell souvenirs. 

Raylan sunk his head back against his pillow. He didn't even remember the descent.

Rachel was kind enough not to sit and stare at him. She got to her next point quick, callous though the subject matter was, after the fact.

“You can go home tonight so long as you're not alone. Otherwise you stay here. So what's it going to be?”

“Well I don't know, Rachel, are you offering your esteemed company?” Suddenly, Raylan sounded tired, touched by sleep or worse. Rachel half-expected his eyes to roll back again, for him to leave her to an emptier room than she’d bargained for. 

All the same, Rachel kept her voice strong, and it hung high in the air like a bar Raylan--if he really tried--might only be able to graze with his fingertips. 

“Depends,” she said. “Are you going to be a pain in my ass?” 

Raylan didn’t blink, didn’t move a muscle. 

“Look at me. I'm the picture of compliant.” 

Something tightened in his expression as the thought found him again-- _She’s gone._ \--and, because he could not find the strength in his body to turn over onto one side and hide himself, he closed his eyes. It was a poor substitute for what he wanted--to vanish under Rachel’s watchful stare. To be as fleeting as Winona. 

-

She liked her home. Missed it, even, over the past few days. It wasn't a thought that found her often--the place was tiny, nothing special, the product of necessity and dissociation after leaving her husband. She could have moved in with her mother and Nick--that was an option since the second Rachel felt uneasy in her ex’s company. But this wasn't _that,_ as she found herself explaining to her therapist--another product of a broken marriage, and running her up monthly bills like a house might. She wasn't once touched or spoken to in a way that hurt or frightened her. In a gorgeous home in a sunny new subdivision, this man at her side and his devotion glittering on her finger, she'd just felt entirely wrong. 

And so she got out, fast as she could, with so little to say for herself that the bitterness did not set in until well after she had gone. 

Her little home came first, rented sight-unseen after she found it on an online listing. 

She chanced this little departure while Raylan slept under the care of professionals at the hospital. Rachel lost her top between her front door and the living room, her jeans down the hall, and her underwear just as she closed the frosted shower door. 

Her sidearm and badge, never to be discarded in such a flurry, made it to their customary place on her bedside table. 

Still, even with the departure of every item that hugged her hips and anchored her frame, Rachel felt no more removed from the past few days than if she’d stepped into the warm spray fully clothed, armed, and ready. 

After showering, she slept a little in her own bed, still unmade from two morning’s ago.

A text from Tim drew her back into wakefulness. She threw off the towel she'd fallen asleep in and put on clean clothes. Even for as mundane and practiced a task, a clean cotton tee and snug jeans felt like a luxury. At the door she slipped a brown leather jacket over her shoulders, and twenty minutes later she met up with Tim later at a coffee shop near the hospital--chosen, she thought, because they'd both had enough of the hospital fare. 

Tim, having ordered for her, was tucked away at a small table bathed in sunlight. It was all he could do to stay awake. He, too, had taken the opportunity to shower, shave, and change out of his two-day-old clothes. He didn't look much better for it, unfortunately, but Rachel supposed that was only a product of knowing him. Tim carried himself in his shoulders and jaw, but there was more to be seen in the dark circles under his eyes and the set of his brow. 

The light clung to his lashes and threw bits of gold into his blue eyes. It was the sole bit of brightness in a face drawn with tiredness and aggravation. 

“I told him,” Rachel announced as she took her seat and her coffee. 

Tim inched back like he thought Rachel's coffee was going to make a great escape and find him across the table. “Everything?”

Rachel shook her head. “No. Just what matters. She left. Twice.”

That Tim felt wholly at fault did not escape her; he gave it away every chance he got. Biting his lip, eyeballing the door. He might as well have presented her with written testimony.

Still, Tim took a note fm Rachel's playbook and did not ask after Raylan's response. He guessed something tragically stoic, as was Raylan's wont when he couldn't simply shoot his problems into oblivion. 

“It's not for nothing, you know. Finding Winona.”

Tim hid his face behind his upturned coffee cup. He felt bad about chasing down a woman who wanted to be left alone, and mumbled as much. 

“She looked that happy, huh?”

“She looked relieved,” Tim admitted, then winced. “I felt like I was there to hurt her.” Not wanting Rachel to feel pressed to absolve him, he quickly followed up with, “That's on me. Anyway.”

“Anyway,” Rachel agreed, quick as a shot. Tim saw the similarities, but was embarrassed enough for having not seen it right off that he didn't question it going over Rachel's head, either. 

In the late afternoon, the cafe was largely empty. Tables were scattered with crumbs and crusted rings of coffee, the occasional soiled napkin. It wasn't much to look at, and Rachel quickly found her sights lasered in on Tim. 

“You missed a spot,” she touched on her cheek where Tim had a few errant hairs on his, shaving.

Tim felt around for his mistake, rubbed at the hairs like he thought enough friction wound singe them off. “You don't think it's a good look for me?” he teased. “The white man's soul patch.”

“The soul patch _is_ the white man's soul patch,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes. “And yours is a little off the mark.”

“How dare you,” Tim admonished, but was smirking, pleased with Rachel’s cheapshot. 

“Suppose it's the first time that's ever been the case.”

“Well,” Tim took another sip of coffee, “Depends where you wanna follow that particular thread.”

Rachel smiled, shook her head. Her good mood failed her as she considered what they were sat here, waiting for. Raylan's body would heal itself in time, good behavior permitting. It was that thought that stalled Rachel, brought her face towards the window, searching for another option, a way out.

Raylan never quite treated himself _good._

“Raylan wants to go home tonight.”

“To what,” Tim asked, eyebrows raised. He hadn't even tidied the man's motel room after Winona took off. 

Eyes hard and demanding, but her smile soft, Rachel's look said it all. 

Tim sighed, dropped his gaze down his empty coffee cup. There was no saying no, mostly since he wasn't even asked. He made a list in his head of all the patchwork things he could throw ahead of his mistake, and how long he could hope to keep Raylan from seeing clear through it. 

“Well. Okay.” 

-

Out from under the objections of medical professionals, Rachel collected Raylan in her car and met Tim at the motel. Night followed close at their heels, but there was still enough light in their approach that they could see Tim had thrown the door open to air the room. 

He'd stripped Raylan's bed, too, started to recover the thing in fresh sheets, recently purchased in a hasty errand between the pharmacy, a steak house, and a number of gas stations, the latter accounted for several cartons of Chaney’s ice cream. He’d stacked those in Raylan’s mini-fridge, penance for his unwitting crime.

If asked outright, he'd claim it was no one's _idea,_ in particular, to bring Raylan back to a cleaned motel room, a few necessities in tow, overnight bags at the ready… Those things fell easily into place. When Rachel entered the room, her body moving in tandem with Raylan's in an effort to keep him on his feet, she surveyed the space as if she'd expected nothing less.

Raylan’s movements were slow and labored, a testament to both the graveness of his injury, and--perhaps more glaring--the extent to which he’d have been better off staying at the hospital another few days, being tended to, properly mended. The way his shoulders pitted forward, as if he was in perpetual threat of toppling over, was the physical embodiment of the doubt with which Rachel and Tim were suddenly met. They shared a look over Raylan’s head as if to say, _Shit. We are not prepared for this._

The stiffness in his steps was, for any other man, a blatant and open show of mild discomfort. For Raylan, it was his best attempt to mask complete agony.

Raylan caught Tim’s eye, gave the barest of nods. “Thought it was just Rachel I was getting,” he said, his voice thin, as if short on air.

“You're a two-man job,” Tim said, nodding back like they’d struck a deal. “Dinner’s there.” 

He left the bed half-made, threw a few pillows onto the side Raylan was closest to so that when Rachel helped him sit, he could still be upright enough to take in a meal. When Rachel and Tim settled into the chairs encircling the small table, itself dragged to meet Raylan at the bed, they altogether had the funny look of a wholesome family.

And they kept there, none of them ever once saying a word to how foolish a thing it was, and nothing like what Raylan wanted. 

Dinner was a medley of southern favorites and American staples: slabs of steak, chicken breast, cooked greens and a litany of sides. There was nothing the three might want and couldn’t easily reach for. It afforded them a few moments of earned silenced, a welcome diversion from the forced quiet they all foresaw. 

Still, Raylan ate sparingly. It could have been the pain in his side or the drugs slowing his system. But Tim thought about what Raylan had been told--what was obviously lost from his motel room as a result--and knew it was a matter of mourning. 

“You should have something better to do,” Raylan said to the room at large. Then, with a twitch of a smirk, “Rachel, I mean.”

“Oh, sure,” Rachel said over the satisfying crunch of fried okra, “Eating in the company of someone who doesn’t smell like antiseptic, for one.” 

“You’re dreaming real big there,” Raylan said.

“The trade-off being, he’s all of twelve years old.”

“How’s Nick doing,” Tim asked, purposefully vague. 

Raylan couldn’t muster as much restraint; he said outright: “He ever ask about Clinton?”

Tracking down Rachel’s brother-in-law in their capacity as Marshals had not opened the floodgates to Rachel talking about him in any other capacity; she kept tight-lipped on her family matters. She'd rather people assume Nick was her child than to revel in the tragedy of her sister time and again as well-meaning colleagues misplaced the pertinent detail.

Tim understood as much. 

Raylan just liked to pretend he didn't. 

“He didn’t used to,” Rachel said upon deciding if ever she was going to expose these truths to a room she did pay to be in twice a month, Raylan's crummy motel room would be ideal. “I think he was embarrassed.” 

“Seeing your daddy get hauled off in cuffs,” Raylan mused aloud, “You get used to it.” 

Rachel patently ignored him; she wanted everything for Nick, similarities to the childhood of Raylan Givens excluded. “More and more, now. He doesn’t like the answers I give him,” she stopped, seemingly lost on her way to the point that followed: “I don’t know what else to say.”

She turned back to her meal; answering Raylan's question was progress enough. She had no intention of opening the floor to opinions.

Raylan seemed to have lost interest, anyway. He stared at his plate with a fixed kind of intensity, like it was a giant stood in his way along a narrow path.

“Loretta’s glad you’re okay,” Tim offered up, speaking through a mouthful of baked potato, “LPD sent somebody out to give her the heads up.”

Raylan made a face like he truly hadn't expected that. Smothering it, he returned to his chilly demeanor. “Where’d they get an idea like that, I wonder.”

“They’re trained professionals,” Tim deadpanned. Admitting to a little softhearted forethought was not in the cards tonight. “Geniuses, every last one of them.”

“Should get ‘em a plaque sayin’ so.”

“Like they could read it.”

By the time the meal was finished and three empty beer bottles crowded the table--one for Rachel, two for Tim, Raylan wasn’t even offered--Rachel had the rest of Raylan’s evening figured out. 

“You want to wash up?” Rachel asked, but did not wait for Raylan's answer. This, Raylan recognized, would be her sole tactic, and it hadn't failed her yet. “Your stitches need to be redressed.” 

“They're fine.”

“So let's see ‘em.”

“Suddenly you're shy,” Tim egged on when Rachel's request went unmet.

“I've never once been double teamed to take off my clothes,” Raylan said, his hand going for the hem of his shirt. “Just thought I'd drink it in.” 

It had been a gamble, and Raylan lost. The piece of gauze fixed to his side was spotting yellow and brown with fluids and blood. He'd been told he'd leak for a few days, and to be mindful, but not overzealous in his concern. Raylan had decided he wouldn't be either, figuring a full recovery or septic shock were fine enough odds. 

Rachel, who was sat closest to Raylan, leaned in and gently pulled back a corner of the bandage. The skin was in turns stretched red and angry at the incursion, and too-white and too-soft towards the point of impact. A confused web of flesh, held together with knotted string as if it had never made it out of the 20th century. 

“Titillating,” Tim said aloud as Rachel hummed in dismay.

Out from under Rachel’s touch, Raylan smoothed the bandage back into place, wincing a little at the pressure he’d needlessly applied. He jerked his chin towards the nearby table of half-eaten food and empties. “Think we could do this somewhere with fewer known contaminants?”

“What,” Rachel said, her voice cold as ice, “Like a hospital?” 

Tim leaned back in his chair and pumped his arm, mimed a raucous cheer for Rachel. The evening’s three beers--Raylan had seen the sixpack, knew it was down to five before they’d settled into dinner--had loosened him up. 

Raylan made it to the bathroom with Rachel’s help--she propped him up, acting like a kickstand under his side much like Tim had done, leading him out of the Bennett House. It wasn’t the smoothest means of transportation, but he got to the bathroom in one piece. 

Rachel settled him down on the edge of the tub, toed down the toilet lid for herself. She peeled Raylan’s shirt up--then off, leading her hand up his arms to guide their way. He grunted, gnashed his teeth in pain, but kept his mouth closed, certain he’d cry out if he chanced a word.

White light blistered across his face and naked front. Raylan didn’t like the view; it had the look of an animal, turned over on its side in surrender, but cut open for all the good it did him. So he changed his line of sight, and saw Rachel, hard-eyed, pursed-lipped, intent. She took studious care with the body under her hands, and Raylan realized he’d never seen her work anything but rowdy fugitives and a gun--sometimes one in each hand. He didn’t know them for gentle instruments. 

She blotted at the blood, cleaned and dried the wound, and applied a new bandage to the entry wound and, dutifully, the exit.

A polite--if embittered--word of thanks died on his tongue as Rachel wet a new washcloth, rubbed it with a fresh bar of soap, and applied it in smooth circles along Raylan’s turned back.

He stilled, wondered.

“What _the hell_ are you doing?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank-you to slashmyheartandhopetoporn, who talked me through my nonexistent plans for this fic and helped me find a direction. :D!!

Rachel hadn’t had a fight in a bathroom since Nick was a toddler, waging a losing battle against bathtime. Before that, it was her first college roommate, and her preteen years with Shawnee before _that._

But there she was, a word away from being _scolded._ Her attempts to see Raylan through the necessities of an evening outside a hospital, impaired by his injury, left the man angry and embarrassed.

A streak of anger--white lightening hot--found Rachel, too. If it was _Winona_ tending to his hurts… She pulled back from that line of thought, scrubbed it fast from her mind. 

“You’re not going to--bathe me.” Raylan spat the words like a swear. 

“You want Tim to do it?” It was all Rachel could stand to do--throw some of that undeserved animosity back in his face. Her sharp retort earned her silence from Raylan, and from the main room, a voice dripping wet with amusement.

“Who am I bathing now?” 

Tim called it out from where he was tidying up the table, collecting empty bottles and containers. There was no doubt he’d cut his ears on every sharp word in Rachel and Raylan’s exchange.

“Raylan,” Rachel said, soft like she meant to convince him of yet another hard truth, “You can’t do this on your own just yet. I thought that was understood.” 

She meant at the hospital, when Raylan’s surgeon was finishing every word of instruction with yet another reminder that he did not approve of Raylan taking off so soon. He’d be granted leniency on the condition that he had company. While slowly tugging on his jeans over the side of his hospital bed, Raylan had claimed to accept the terms.

Sat in those same jeans--the left side stained with blood at the hip--Raylan’s mouth twisted into a gutless frown. He didn’t want to cement his position, but nor did he have the words, now, to refute it.

“Just--get Tim in here. Please.”

“Okay.”

Rachel set the washcloth and soap on the edge of the tub, near where Raylan sat, his legs splayed. She packed up the clean bandages and stowed them away under the sink. 

Between the bathroom and the living space, she didn't share a word with Tim--Raylan guessed it only took a look, something pinched in annoyance, or slackened--maybe--because she was embarrassed for being ousted. Tim’s earlier task of outfitting the bed with clean sheets was already met. Raylan couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard the motel door open and close. 

Tim entered the bathroom two seconds later, pushing his shirtsleeves up to his elbows, eyes narrowed in question, lips parted as if he expected Raylan to recognize his error, cut Tim off before he even asked.

“Don't make me regret this,” Raylan warned. Tim met him with a bemused little smile.

“How can you not already regret this?” Tim said. Then, “Take your pants off.”

Where Rachel had commanded a professional distance, Tim took a seat right behind Raylan along the side of the tub. He threw a leg over the edge, even, to keep his balance and angle himself wholly towards Raylan, who was naked save for boxer shorts. Tim’s pant leg got caught in the weak spray from the showerhead and soaked itself through, but Tim didn’t seem to mind. He gathered the washcloth Rachel had abandoned and took up her task.

Raylan was sorely mistaken if he thought trading Rachel for Tim would grant him a smoother go of things. 

“If it was me I’d want Rachel to do it,” Tim said, wholly unprompted. “She’s got soft hands.” 

Raylan took a second washcloth into his hand, made a show of helping. His aching sides kept him from covering much ground.

“It’s inappropriate.”

“Why do I get the feeling that’s the first time you’ve ever used that word in a sentence,” Tim drawled. He moved from Raylan’s shoulders and down his back, slowing his efforts as he neared the red, aggravated skin surrounding the exit wound. “Why is it inappropriate? ‘Cause she’s a girl?”

Raylan gave an irritable huff--he might have surrendered himself over to be _handled_ like a child, but he wouldn’t be spoken to like one. “Yes, Tim. You got me. If I get cooties now my immune system will tank.”

Tim snorted, then passed Raylan a dry cloth to keep over his bandaged front. He kept another pressed to Raylan's back, and it was a curious thing, Raylan thought, for a hole to have been torn through his body. He didn't think of it happening to fugitives and dumbasses he took aim at. He took some small comfort in knowing that--usually--they didn't live through the pain. 

“So?”

“Well, I thought to myself, this here’s a job best done out of disdain.”

“You got me there,” Tim allowed. As he dragged the soapy washcloth across Raylan’s shoulders, down his long arms, Tim thought to himself, _Rachel wasn’t lying._ Raylan had the distinct aroma of antiseptic ointments and overly-laundered hospital wears. It was a far cry from a sharp touch of aftershave and the tell-tale scent of an afternoon vanilla cone. 

Tim hummed, as if thoughtful. “No, that ain’t it. I think you like me for a conversationalist.”

“If ever I do, it’s because the next bullet found my brain, and I’m a vegetable.”

“Well, see now, this is a brighter turn. You’re thinking about the future.”

Raylan huffed in annoyance. “Make you a deal. I get shot again, you finish the job. This sucks.”

“I'm honored you'd think of me. Lift your arm?”

Raylan… tried.

“I got it.” Tim’s deferral came half a second too late, and Raylan's pride took the hit. He scrubbed Raylan's left armpit, then the right. Tim moved onto Raylan’s front, washing from behind everywhere that wasn’t covered by the dry cloth pressed to his gunshot wound. 

“I can do--some of it.”

“So wow me,” Tim said, dropping the washcloth into Raylan's lap.

With some difficulty--but no shortage of determination--Raylan was able to wash what was closest to him without having to lift his hand. In slow circles, he drew the cloth around his thigh and very nearly down to his knee, or as far as his arm could reach before he was forced to shift his torso forward, an impossible task if ever there was one. The hole in his side felt uniquely present, as if the gun that had done the damage was pressed through it, hand on the trigger to boot. In all, the scrubbing he managed was more for show than effect. 

“I am sufficiently wowed,” Tim said. Raylan heard the accompanying grin as sure as if Tim had pressed his gleaming teeth into the back of his neck. “You’re washing that leg like it’s going places.”

“Not attached to me, it ain't.” 

The movements made his arm feel tight and drawn. Raylan abandoned the washcloth, surrendering to his body's response to the heavy rounds of antibiotics. It was that much, he figured (hoped), more so than the shooting, which disqualified him from so many simple gestures. 

Raylan supposed he was surprising himself left and right today: he didn't know himself to give up so quickly.

“They throw some bullets at you, first?”

“What?”

Tim drew the washcloth over a sensitive swath of Raylan’s back, watched the musculature twitch and relax. “Bruises.”

“Oh. No. Courtesy of Dickie Bennett and a baseball bat.”

“A man with an intellectual capacity equal only to his tools. That’s what you’d call poetic.” Tim studied the soft bloom of purple curling along Raylan’s side to take shelter in his armpit. “How’d that resolve itself, I wonder.”

“Boyd,” Raylan said, and did not elaborate.

“You still kind of reek. I think it’s the hair.” Tim waited only a beat; he had neither the skill nor the overwhelming urge to salvage Raylan's pride. “Y’mind?”

“Jesus Christ,” Raylan lamented, but did not take issue against the hand at his neck starting to tip him towards the water.

“Not like I’ve never washed a man’s hair before,” Tim said. 

He let Raylan soak a moment before running his fingers along the base of his skull, and letting the water follow suit. It was a pleasant sensation, something Raylan’s body knew he needed every time he found himself down in Harlan County. To instead saturate his skin in the dirt, grime, and stink of the place over the course of nearly two days had all the hallmarks of a secondary wound, affixed to his skin like a burn. 

“Sounds like a story.”

“Maybe you’ll hear it sometime,” Tim said, then, while guiding Raylan's head himself, “Turn.” 

“Why don't you tell it to me now while the embarrassment is still hot.”

“Oh, the embarrassment will keep.”

Tim let the water run while he made an executive decision on the shampoo--there were two options, and Tim didn't figure Raylan for an infusion of green tea and pomegranate. He took a dollop of the generic brand and went to work. 

The shower felt good as soon as Raylan relaxed and let his body enjoy it. The steam and heat conspired to clear his head, and for a moment Winona’s absence did not feel so near. But Raylan heard himself speak again, sabotage the silence because, without it, at least he couldn’t think about what he wasn’t thinking about. 

“You ain’t got a line for how hard this is making you?”

“Making me a little wet.”

Tim was teasing him, but not about much. The weakness in Raylan’s arms and his inability to complete a simple task for himself was, as this juncture, completely normal. Expected. It was only shame that drove Raylan out of the hospital--every stupid thing after was his own doing. Dinner in bed, one scorned colleague and another with his hands in Raylan’s hair seemed an unlikely collection, but it was all Raylan had to show for himself, now. 

“It's fine,” Tim said, his voice a familiar angle of flat Raylan could picture over the coffee maker on a Monday morning or a Friday afternoon, with Tim giving non-answers about his weekend. It wasn’t comforting or snide, or anything in between--just air pressed against the shape of his lips and words spilling after. “You know. If you're miserable. Uh. For whatever reasons.”

Raylan sighed, closed his eyes to the streams of water cascading off his crown. He thought of a simpler time--being grounded on his back on a dusty patch outside the Bennett place, a pistol trained on him and certain death in his future. 

“It ain’t a good thing, getting emotional reassurance from you.”

“Well you had your chance with Rachel. You’re just steadily lowering the bar, now.”

“I think the bar is certifiably buried.” 

“Dead and,” Tim agreed. “Anyway. You smell like a daisy. Mission accomplished.”

“Super,” Raylan said. He was staring at his own naked toes, curling against the white of the tub. Tim swept his hair back for him. It was a surprisingly gentle gesture, if Raylan could hazard the term.

“Think you can stand, rinse off? Lose the drawers, maybe?” At Raylan's hesitation, Tim was fast with another obscure confirmation, some easy word to make it appear like Raylan’s natural wariness was unwarranted. “Nothing I haven't seen. I even look at my own from time to time.”

“Visual confirmation… Is key,” Raylan said, and let Tim hook one hand under his armpit, let the other splay flat over his shoulder, guiding him upwards. Raylan tugged down his boxers, and Tim handed him the washcloth. Tim kept his head down, gaze off somewhere like the wall molding over the sink was so spectacular a thing he had to commit the style to memory. There was no inherent unease; only the fact that Raylan had to be prompted to do these things infused the situation with a silted air. 

“I'm just saying. A raging case of crotch rot might get you sent right back to the hospital.” 

“You wouldn’t handle that for me, too?” 

“Well I’m no medical professional, but I’d take a whack at it.” 

Raylan's back carried itself like a stilted ocean swell; all the power inherent in its being was trapped by some alien force. Tim's first thought would have been the gunshot wound, but after allowing his eyes to wander Raylan's figure in the mirror, he scrapped that notion, though none other came roaring in to replace it. 

Tim waited as Raylan, his back turned, slowly washed himself and stood--albeit with Tim's steadying hand--half-turned into the water’s spray. The next minute stretched slowly passed them, and it was going on two before Tim realized Raylan was fucking with him. 

“Is this why you didn't eat much? You had to conserve all your energy into washing your dick?”

When Raylan turned back around, he was grinning. “That, and I knew I'd have to pick it up, first.”

He accepted the towel Tim pressed into his hands, as well as the accompanying pat down. 

Raylan spied a t-shirt and loose pants folded and left on the edge of the bathroom sink, and knew neither belonged to him. “You bought me pajamas? Christ.”

“Rachel got those. I told her you slept in the nude.”

“I didn't, that time--”

“Don’t go thinking I didn't recognize the sacrifice,” Tim drawled while dropping a warm-wet hand to Raylan’s hip, thumb gliding just above the stitching of his wound. He secured his grip there, and with his free hand maneuvered the shirt over Raylan’s head, threading his arms through with the least amount of undue aggravation. 

He dropped the pants into a puddle at Raylan's feet, and Raylan stared down at Tim’s heat-mussed hair, parting from its design in loose waves. 

“Why’d you tell her that?”

Tim stood ramrod straight so that his shrug was mistaken for nothing less than total apathy. “Throw her off her game.”

Raylan bent uneasily at the waist, stepped into the loose pants and let Tim pull them up and-- _Lord_ \--cinch the waist.

Then, a sudden wave of nausea overtook Raylan’s petulant streak. It presented itself in a twisting little grimace and the draining of color from his cheeks and lips. Tim noticed the change immediately, and inched back half a step to give Raylan some room to breathe. 

“You gonna be sick?” Tim asked, ashamed that he hadn’t anticipated the potentially explosive combination: a lengthy shower coupled with twisting limbs could unsettle him, kick his system into overdrive after having just fed it a meal and a heavy round of antibiotics. 

It wasn’t so far from what Raylan was thinking, himself, but just as quickly as it overtook him, the feeling passed. “No. We're clear.” 

Raylan’s voice was strained and thin as wet linen, but the sentiment held. 

It didn't keep Tim from staring, evaluating all that there was to see and exhausting himself on tired eyes and sloped shoulders.

Tim had the stern look of a man who knew better than to twice trust someone who'd once fooled him. The circumstances curbed his distrust: here was a man abandoned. If--and when--he went searching for something, he'd be fit enough to draw on his own pants, first. It was a crude measurement, but Tim about as confident in it as he could. He pulled back his gaze, put away questions of character and instinct, and rested on his laurels as a sharpshooter. Raylan was a slow-moving target, finally.

“Well, okay. You want some ice cream?” 

-

Raylan looked around the room from his upright position in bed. Imbued in every corner was some vision, some ghostly shadow of _her,_ and when he caught glimpses, he stared longer, hoping for something of substance to play out and answer for his confusion and heartache.

He avoided his colleagues, cut them out of his line of sight like civilians in a standoff. It wasn't difficult; Rachel--who had returned, or possibly never left--was sat with his back to him in one of the two chairs surrounding the small table. Tim had dragged the other across the room, and sat in it slumped, his legs drawn up and crossed at the heel, resting on the edge of Raylan's dresser. 

Raylan didn't have to see their faces if he didn't want to. 

Winona's was a different matter altogether; he searched, longed for her. It was a convoluted thing, but as much as he felt bereft of her comforting touch, his desires were not so selfish; Raylan only hoped that she knew he was alright, that he hadn't disappointed her yet.

Raylan had an open pint of Chaney’s Cow Tracks ice cream resting on his belly, with enough of a dent put into it that he felt satisfied with the effort. 

Rachel had a pint, too, and took delicate curls off her spoon. Tim forewent the entire operation, had another beer instead. They flipped through the various late night fare, settled on a baseball game running long (Tim pulled his mouth off the bottle long enough to snark, “How can you tell?”). The night settled warm and loose around them. Tim tore into the paper pharmacy bag like a meal, curious as to what was in there, nevermind having been the one to pick it up. As he rifled through Raylan's medication, he and Rachel began to talk loosely of staying the night.

Raylan tore his thoughts of Winona--and his gaze from the Cardinals’ double play--and caught what his colleagues were plotting. “What, now?”

And suddenly they were unavoidable: their bodies turned towards Raylan, their attention won by his losses. 

“You gonna nix Rachel from the running there, too?”

“Oh no, I wouldn’t single her out like that,” Raylan said, downright kindly in his delivery. “Both of you can leave.”

“You fine to wet yourself when you can’t get out of bed in time?” Tim asked, his expression unreadable. “Honest question.”

“Raylan,” Rachel started, ever the seasoned negotiator, “It’s been a tough night. The morning won’t be any kinder to you.”

Tim threw up a hand at the elbow. Ready, but not raring. “I’ll stay. I’ve already become so well-acquainted with the floor.”

He looked to Rachel for confirmation. 

“You don’t have to ask me twice,” she said, and Raylan figured even if she was still smarting from his behavior in the shower, her disdain for the floor of his motel room was genuine. She slipped her leather jacket over her white tee, flipped her hair off the collar and checked her pocket for her keys. She gathered her badge and gun from what was a genuine pile of them on the dresser. She nodded at Tim, promised, “I’ll relieve you in the morning.”

“Thank you,” Raylan said, faster than Tim could get a response off. Rachel nodded at him, next, but her gaze still felt hard, and Raylan had to fight the impulse to issue some thoughtless apology, absent of any clue as to how it was he'd wrong her.

Winona had always hated those.

“Get some sleep,” Rachel told him, and took her leave. 

After finishing his beer, Tim lumbered to his feet, stretched, then went to the bathroom to shower and change his shirt. He scooped up Raylan's antibiotics and pain medication from the dresser as he circled back into the room. 

He heaved a sigh and started in: “Alright, listen here. You can take two of these every eight hours--max, not as desired--and one of these every morning,” Tim shook each bottle respectively, then turned away.

“Might help if I could get to them,” Raylan said, and saw Tim frown when he realized he still had both bottles in his hand. He wordlessly returned them to Raylan's bedside.

“Force of habit?” Raylan asked, though he didn't really expect outright confirmation or denial. Either way, he had a clue now as to how Tim became so adept at handling a sack of flesh like it was still a man. 

“Still trying to gauge the degree to which you are a dumbass,” Tim said, his tone neat and tidy while the sentiment dragged through the mud.

Raylan shook his head. “I'll get my ass shot, but overdosing ain't quite my style.” 

“You ever been shot before?” Tim asked pointedly. 

They didn't talk much after that. Raylan wasn't going to argue after what he didn't know; he'd just let Tim see for himself that Raylan didn't mind a little pain. Understood it as a necessary part of life, even. 

Tim plopped down on the floor, settled himself on his belly atop his sleeping bag. Raylan couldn't get a good look--Tim had again put himself between Raylan's bed and the dresser, his head facing the door, as if he thought Raylan was going to get the jump on him again. But occasionally, a socked foot would stretch up and sail across his field of vision. 

Tim kept quiet, read deep into some monster of a book with a colorful cover, just one in an extensive series. It suited them both. Raylan didn’t want to talk and, for a time, he felt like he was actually alone. He could finally think.

His thoughts never strayed far from Winona.

Her leaving him--and putting it to paper--had been a loud and raucous affair, complete with shouting matches and slamming doors. Winona never went quietly, and she never retreated in fear. Raylan racked his memory--had he missed it? Where was her righteous anger? Had it passed him, fast as a crack of lightening, and left him drowning in this storm?

Raylan could--at least--raise a hand to drop on his face for that one. Painkillers made him morose and loopy. 

He wanted a drink, even figured Tim would give it to him. But Raylan couldn’t bring himself to ask. There was too much on the line, least of all his insistence that the aid and service of his fellow Marshals was a waste. 

So Raylan took turns thinking about Winona and that drink until the evening got away from him. 

-

“How are you feeling?” Tim asked aloud into the dark. It had been nearly an hour since they’d turned off the lights and made a show of going to sleep. Tim knew Raylan had not so much as wavered; he’d been as alert as the drugs in his system would allow, and he was in pain--Tim knew that, too. He could hear it, every time Raylan's breath hitched before he moved in bed. The stillness, thereafter, like he had to concentrate to regain any sense of himself in a body that seemed to reject him. 

Raylan mistakenly gave himself away in the sounds he tempered and those that blew out of him, the quiet groans he was powerless to stop. They both liked to imagine that they couldn't be heard. 

After some genuine thought, Raylan answered, “Somehow worse than if I’d shot someone.”

“Wild.” Tim let the word drag. “I’m going to ponder that.”

Raylan closed his eyes, opened them again. The room was dark, the new bedsheets on Raylan’s bed cool to the touch. Every comfort--save for his desired company--was afforded to him, and yet Raylan couldn’t hardly stand it. He burned from the inside, heat and aggravation pulsing from the tear in his side. He’d lost fights and partial feeling in his left leg to a dog’s bite, come away with bruises and scars and stories alike. This was something else, and worse still--a fluke. A stray bullet that got him, not even the one Doyle Bennett swore to deliver. 

“It hurts.”

Raylan heard his own voice for something strained, empty of what normally filled it: strength and assurance, hard-won gravitas, a commonly held sense of righteousness. He'd never thought to name them all, but in feeling their absence so profoundly, each seemed to leave behind a gravestone.

“I can only imagine,” Tim threw back, then softened his take, sat up. “It hurts-hurts? Like you need to go back to the hospital? Jesus, this was stupid--”

Raylan cut him off, dismissed the sudden wave of concern. “It hurts like it's been hurting. Nothing new.” 

Tim disappeared again, leading Raylan to imagine the end of his bed as a cliff’s edge. Anyone could fall off the side with only one wrong step; it was nothing sinister, only chaotic. Raylan studied the two hills of his feel under the covers, the valley drawn between them. Distrust spilled down his throat, fell like water from a spout, pooled in his belly. 

“Tim.” Raylan announced his name as if there was anyone else in the room who could confuse Raylan's attention as their own. “You ever been shot before?”

“I’ve never had the pleasure.”

“How the hell not?”

Tim snorted in response, though Raylan hadn't quite meant it as a joke. The ache in his side was reaching out through his limbs, grasping to touch his fingers and toes. Raylan got his hand on the bottle of painkillers, and didn’t miss hearing Tim sit up when he did. 

“I'm taking one of these.” As soon as he said it, the question re-emerged, expanded throughout the room like a noxious gas. This time, Tim saw fit to answer.

“I got a friend…” Raylan thought that about said it all, but Tim kept on, adding, “My spotter. Near about lost his leg in Kandahar. I'd already re-upped, so it was a year before I saw him again. He’s hooked on Oxy, now.” 

Raylan didn’t see cause for Tim to tell him of the disrupted time frames, except in the case that Tim blamed himself, and the vision was a linear one as he understood it. Raylan knew a lot of addicts and that kind of storytelling suited them just fine. There was always something that could have been done to alter their path, and the doer only one person: a saintly being just out of their reach.

He knew far fewer soft-hearted snipers, but sure as anything, there was one in a sleeping bag at the end of his bed.

“Well, I guess we’ll see how this goes, then.” Raylan meant to sound like an asshole, figured the familiarity would set them both at ease. Beyond the foot of his bed, Tim--pleased--voiced the equivalent of spoken-word laughter.

“I guess we will.”

Raylan smoothed his thumb over the single white pill, read its label silently to himself. He swallowed it dry and did not keep awake long enough to argue with Tim, reason his case. The compulsion altogether dimmed the instant Raylan felt the cool touch of numbness roll throughout his body. For one brief, glorious second he felt like his own sense of self could be rolled out, shaped into something pleasing and new. 

Hell of a thing, he thought. Feeling nothing like yourself. 

-

Raylan awoke in a cold sweat. He felt the slickness sticking to his body like ill will, thrown in heaps from across the room. Any more and he'd have _drowned_ in it. It stifled him, added unaccounted weight to his limbs and pressure--touched with a sour-mouthed kiss--to his torn side. 

Worse, he needed to take a piss. 

He started to say so: “I gotta--”

Tim seemed to wake half a second before him, and was standing at the foot of the bed, a pale spectre in the black of the room. Wordlessly--as if the quiet of night could still be salvaged--he took Raylan to the bathroom, first seeing to the pertinent issue. Raylan leaned heavily on Tim, and they shuffled more than walked. Raylan couldn't seem to find his body; it was too far removed in the fog of his mind. He reached out, kept missing it. 

The blackest corners of the motel room seemed to buzz green--a trick of the eyes, only, as they drew from primal means of discerning the dark. Raylan figured plunging into some vast thicket of woods seemed as ideal a prospect as being led to a toilet.

Of their combined efforts there, Raylan didn’t remember much come morning; Tim offered little beyond a firm grip at the crux of Raylan’s elbow and sense enough to toe up the dropped seat. Miraculously, Raylan didn’t wet himself.

Raylan _would_ remember Tim sighing at some point, long and drawn, then rubbing a hand over his face and through his sleep-strewn hair. In the moment, Raylan believed he must have felt a twinge of shame. Any other circumstance, he’d be half-asleep still, laid up in a hospital bed and pissing into a catheter, his colleagues none the wiser. They--having done their jobs and not getting shot for their trouble--would be sleeping in their own beds, not kipped at the foot of his. 

Raylan didn’t harbor those feelings too long. He hadn’t asked them to stay. 

And--clearly--there was a precedent for leaving.

If he’d had the strength--or if he could trade heartache for animosity easily as most folks--he’d have told Tim to fuck off, and welcomed the prospect of carrying himself on his own or die trying.

The fact that he could be angry-- _always_ angry enough--suddenly wasn’t there, didn’t fuck things up or serve him well. And Raylan felt he had all the agency of a wet noodle as Tim steered Raylan towards the shower again, after, to rinse off. 

Neither bothered with the presumption of modesty; Raylan stripped and Tim kept him steady. In the dark, still before their eyes adjusted, there was nothing to see. The pants were soaked through, damp to the touch, and when they hit the bathroom floor they might as well have fallen in a pit, never to be retrieved. The shirt, itself a squelching-slick mess, went after it. Tim put a dry washcloth in Raylan’s hand and kept another at his back. 

“You gonna tell me that story, now?” Raylan's voice was rough under the water. He hadn’t waited for it to warm up, though he hardly felt the chill. His overly-warm body seemed to compensate, and in the dark he imagined steam billowing up from his shoulders and neck.

“Well I dunno, Raylan, maybe--” Tim stopped, the last word on his tongue sliding back down his throat, lodging there. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he'd seen something it would have been impossible to otherwise miss. “Uh. You want some privacy while you deal with that?” 

It was through some primal instinct that Raylan recognized the tone: locker room jockeying, buoyed by jeering amusement. He looked down, and had neither the energy to feel impressed or dismayed at his discovery. 

“Huh,” Raylan said. He could hardly feel the thing. He stared a moment at his morning wood, drawn like a mast without a sail, and knew it wasn't in him to summon even the _barest_ amount of coordination to tackle the matter to completion. He decided the water was cool enough to see it off. “No. I’ll just let it die.”

Raylan expected another joke--maybe even a backhanded compliment that, given Raylan’s age, he was willing to the opportunity pass him by. 

“Hey, I’d offer to give you a hand, but,” Tim stopped mid-sentence, realizing even in a haze of ill-timed wakefulness that there was no salvaging the line. He’d already said _something_ in his readiness and ease, and to walk back from it said too much more. Tim would allow dead air before a fumbled recovery. 

“But it’d take two?” Raylan asked, and god _damn_ if this wasn’t the most inept either man had felt since infancy.

His attempt to finish the joke didn’t rescue the situation; it only gave it a lungful of air before plunging it underwater again. 

If there was a gesture made or a look in Tim’s eye, Raylan didn’t see it. Didn’t look for it, even. There was no misunderstanding the hem-haw tone fed into the low rumble at his back: Tim was at a loss to understand his own misstep, and embarrassment didn't even begin to cover it.

“It’s weird that I offered to offer,” he said, not leaving it up to question.

“Uh,” Raylan stalled, like making a value judgment was his hangup, here.

“I don’t,” Tim grimaced. _Like you?_ Was that what things had come to? Making a third grade assessment of _all this,_ the combined efforts of his sudden, unexpected concern for Raylan’s well-being--whether in something as apparent as the hole in his side, or less appealing still, as in his crumbling love life--and his steadfast rejection of Raylan as he stood, the sum of his impulses, violence, and a morality of his own design? 

Tim heard himself grinding his teeth. 

“Derision,” Tim concluded at last. “About sums up my,” he nodded his head to one side, indicating Raylan’s persistent presence. “Feelings. For this here. Predicament. _You.”_

“Ouch,” Raylan said, as if hurt. That he neither answered for the sideways offer or offered his own feelings--a simple _likewise_ would have sufficed--threw Tim. Raylan felt himself pushed, slightly, out of the steady stream of lukewarm water. 

“That all you're gonna say?” Tim spoke with a voice like he was asking after some fool thing they both knew Raylan had done. Even the weight of his hand--still present on Raylan’s back--had an air of inevitability to it, like it couldn't wait to peel away, wronged. 

“Tim--” Raylan was hardly able to get his name out before the hand disappeared, and Raylan felt its absence like a chill. But the air in the room didn't still, and Tim didn't forfeit his pride, and a hole in the earth didn't open up and swallow them down hundreds of feet into darkness. And Tim's absent hand hadn't gone far--only drifting for a moment of respite as he dragged it across his own face, and through his hair, like Raylan’s idle teasing was a planted nest of spiders. 

“Don't think I won't let you fall on your ass and break a hip, here. Get you right back into a hospital where you belong.” Tim's hand returned even as he turned further away from Raylan, shifted his weight from his left foot to his right, and blew an annoyed reach out of his nose. “All I’m saying is, if I did offer, it’d be because I have low standards.”

“Hey--thanks?” Raylan laughed warmly, and on the whole he was unsure if he wasn’t still in the midst of a fever dream. It was no stretch of the subconscious to twist Tim's aid elsewhere--lower--and see it for another absurdity. In his desire to be nearer to Winona--and for his purposes, that still meant outside the hospital--Raylan had been able to banish the reality from his mind: he was unwell. He required care. 

And the aid of his colleagues appeared fast as though they'd been conscripted to provide it. But then it lingered, and fell the way of a gift.

And it didn't quite bother him anymore. Raylan suddenly felt the impulse to revel in it. 

“I take it you mean to insult me. No dice. I’m flattered.”

“Aw, don’t be.” Tim’s tone was loose and lyrical, as if he was smiling. But Raylan caught a glimpse of Tim’s expression in the fog-touched mirror, and knew it to be cut like stone. The man was not stood but a foot behind him, clad in an undershirt and his hastily-drawn on, still-unbuttoned jeans, looking like he’d sooner run barefoot through the motel parking lot than continue this conversation. “I got piss-poor taste in men.”

“Sounds like another story,” Raylan said, then, “I suppose I can commiserate. In a roundabout way.”

Tim made some noncommittal noise--coming back around to your ex-wife only to have her leave you while you've hardly come out of surgery for some fool-heroic act was certainly _something_ \--then asked, “You want to finish up on your own?”

There was nothing to finish; Raylan was clean again, refreshed under the chilly water. But he'd found comfort there, soaking himself in the dark, and the prospect of a few more minutes conjured bliss in his mind. 

“I can hardly lift my arms,” he reasoned simply. 

He reckoned Tim had just wanted to say so, make the implicit explicit, and chose this moment so as to best judge Raylan's reaction. 

“What are you, some kind of asshole who’ll leave me to drown in my own tub?”

Tim reached for a towel, kept it poised and readied for when Raylan chose to take it. 

“Nah, I’d probably stay to watch that.” 

When Raylan took two slow steps out of the shower, Tim opened the same playbook as before, helping Raylan dry and clothe himself. He peeled back the moistened corner of the bandage on his front, let Raylan swab the area himself. 

“Poor taste, huh? What, like straight guys?”

Tim drew back in faux shock, and asked in a dead-eyed expression Raylan would know even in the dark: “You’re straight?”

Tim set Raylan in the doorway like one might rest a broom or much-deliberated household accoutrements--fake palm leaves or garbage masquerading as a vintage treasure. Those bobble-topped craspedias in the acid yellow shade Winona liked. Raylan felt ornamental, to a point. He watched as Tim went about replacing his sweat-soaked sheets with the original set, though not without first layering the bed with towels. Another trick of the trade.

These were the sheets he'd last shared with Winona, Raylan realized as he settled in under Tim's instruction. Despite the pain inherent in his side, he could not stifle the sudden impulse to turn to his left as though he expected to see his empty bed miraculously filled. 

He might have screamed out for all the refusal of his by to comply with his deeds, but the non-discovery took the air out of his lungs, left him empty even of hurt.

“Shit,” he said, a quiet lament, pitying in a way Raylan wasn't familiar with himself. 

Tim, still holding a bundle of sodden sheets like there was anything to do but abandon them, watched him. 

“I’m fine,” Raylan said. For Tim's enduring silence, the admission seemed apropos of nothing. He kept going. “I just. I don’t understand.” His next breath rattled through his rib cage, a sad little tune to accompany his troubles. “She…” 

Raylan stopped himself, somewhat so Tim didn't have to, but mostly because he didn't know how to finish that thought. Her intentions, her reasoning--all eluded him. She'd ghosted out of her life and left no discernible trace, abandoning even the conversations they'd had, the promise of a future together, Raylan now knowing better what she wouldn't stand for. He’d had so many ideas as to how to see her desires through his actions.

That future seemed so much further away, now, than when he'd last held a hand to her belly and known warmth and burgeoning life.

When Raylan situated himself clear on his back again, and stared ahead, he noticed that Tim had the hangdog look of a guilty man. Seeing something you’d rather not sometimes had that effect. 

Though, Tim hadn't looked Raylan in the eye--not once--during his entire stay. 

Raylan shelved the idea, deciding a pinched, unsettled look was the hallmark of someone who didn't have answers.

Instead of going back to sleep himself, Tim settled in at the small table by the window. It was too dark to read by, and Raylan didn't know what he expected to do there.

Keep watch, Raylan supposed. It was the simplest answer.

-

Morning came and went, passing over Raylan as he slept soundly, a fine revision on the earlier half of his night. 

When he awoke, Tim had gone. Raylan’s sodden sheets were laundered, folded, and poised on the corner of the table nearest the door. Rachel sat to the right of them, a paperback in hand, her gaze travelling the pages. 

“How was last night?”

Raylan blinked tiredly. His body still felt distant from him, lost to sleep. He thought that if he moved, his gunshot wound would rally his limbs with a cry, and pain would find him again. 

“I got two baths.”

Eyes still on her book, Rachel chanced a smirk. “That good, huh?”

“Tim ever tell you--?” Raylan stopped himself. “Nevermind.”

“No?”

“It's nothing.”

Rachel didn’t laugh outright, but she fell close. She bit her teeth into a wide, soundless grin. Her amusement filled the room like bird song and Raylan felt himself relax. He wasn't betraying any confidence, here; Tim had told him no secret. 

“How'd that come up?” Rachel asked, not naming the thing out of habit. Tim never did, which was itself a strange phenomenon to behold: he was blunt in everything save for this, the simple acknowledgement that he held affections.

“Fine choice of words,” Raylan drawled, and finally began to sit up in bed. 

It was just shy of noon when Raylan had himself shuffling slowly around the motel room, moving like he was late for something. He collected his phone, keys, wallet, and hat from where they’d been scattered to the dresser, windowsill, night stand, and table, respectively. He figured he had Tim to blame for that, but Rachel kept conspicuously quiet as he made his search.

And she kept a speculative eye on him all the while. 

“You're supposed to be resting.”

“Did plenty of resting in the hospital,” was Raylan’s excuse. “All my beauty sleep, too.”

“Have you seen yourself lately? ‘Cause you could stand a little more.”

“I need out of here.”

Rachel didn’t budge, didn’t sigh or allow her resolve to soften. But because she had some sliver of hope that Raylan could see reason if it was spelled out ahead of him, she asked, “Where do you want to be, Raylan?”

“You could drive me to the office, let me pick up my car, to start.”

“I am not doing that,” she said. The whole day suddenly stretched out long ahead of her, and she imagined having this same conversation a dozen times over. “You think you can tough it out? Doing one damn thing like you were asked?” 

The line hit Raylan harder than she’d meant it to. It held in his face, kept like the stinging of a slap long after the offending hand had gone. Rachel wondered why she thought this man--restricted to a stride of inches, side perpetually twisted in pain, with one hand lost to the effort to holding it all in--posed any chance of evading her.

“Winona’s place. Just--to see.” 

And in his plain speech and simple wording, she supposed she had her answer: Raylan wouldn’t strategically evade her so much as go someplace she could not follow. He meant to run back into the fire he’d started with Winona, get burned for his troubles.

“I can ask nicely,” Raylan offered. At it did sound nice--the words curled between his lip, his eyes crinkling softly in anticipation of getting his way.

Rachel sighed in defeat. Seeing to a man’s needs were one thing, his desires another. Tim had had it easy.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made an edit to chapter 3--I’d forgotten that Dickie Bennett worked Raylan over with a bat, so that got a mention. Nothing that changes the story, just a little detail that was nagging after me!

Winona's home was the suburban castle Rachel remembered it to be with its off-white coloring, dusty pink touches at the windows, and green lawn--itself celebrating a cut perpetually hedging its bets between luxurious and needing a trim. It was a verifiable dreamland of well-kept hedges, sophisticated color schemes, and a touch of whimsy in the two-toned flowers in the plant beds engulfing the house in a fragrant embrace. It was a prize equal to the effort: marriage, however misguided in its making. 

With Raylan's slow progression their shared norm, there was plenty of time for Rachel to take in the view. 

While she wouldn't have put it past Raylan to stage a break-in, he had a key, and for all the curiosities clouding their approach, a forced entrance wasn't one of them. 

They stepped into the foyer and were confronted with piles of boxes, some filled, others not. Rachel glanced at Raylan, uneasy, but he seemed well aware of the mess. Rachel remembered, then, that Gary had taken off as well, gone when his business dealings caught up to him and endangered his wife’s life. 

Gary’s belongings were still there, intermingled with Winona’s. Overbearing leather chairs with thick mahogany legs--overpriced and ugly for it--sat under crocheted afghan throws, themselves beautiful but useless. They had made quite the pair.

Rachel afforded Raylan support and balance as she helped him walk all around the main floor. They dodged box-lined hallways and empty nooks. It was a tour she didn’t ask for, didn’t want.

“Bedroom,” Raylan said after they'd circled back to their starting point, “Is upstairs.”

Rachel held her tongue, didn't say that it would be all around easier for her to pack it up and bring what was left downstairs. The long slough would only aggravate Raylan’s side, and if he didn't find what he wanted, it would undoubtedly be a trip made twice in too short a timeframe. 

“Let me take a look, first. Could be she's already packed up and whatever you're looking for is down here,” she gestured to the boxes drawn up like mountains around them. 

“Sure.”

“Do you want to sit, or--?”

“Just prop me up in a corner. I'll be fine.”

“Tim's technique,” Rachel guessed, and had to work to smother the smirk pulling at the corners of her lips.

“Tried and true,” Raylan said, and leaned into the narrow space between the doorframe and stairs, hip-first.

“I'm sure he's very tender.”

Rachel was ultimately dismayed: Winona hadn’t packed up her bedroom at all. It was untouched, and Raylan would undoubtedly see it for a crime scene worthy of his time and attention. 

It crossed her mind to lie, to spare Raylan the indignity of searching his ex-wife’s bedroom for clues, as if she hadn’t taken all the evidence with her, neatly tucked into the back of her car. She’d decided her departure already; Raylan would have better luck inspecting the skidmarks outside his motel, or the GPS on Tim’s car. 

Rachel saw the idea for the fantasy it was, and discarded it well before she turned, left the room, and started back down the stairs. Raylan could not have to be fooled into submission; he’d have and understand his truth about Winona in his own way.

-

It was a long slough up the stairs, but Rachel didn’t linger to catch her breath before taking them down again. Lest she give Raylan the opportunity to _ask_ that she leave him to investigate in peace, Rachel pre-empted the request, departing with a simple, _“Shout if you need anything.”_

Rachel went downstairs, wandered around. The AC and phone lines were still operational, which made Rachel unconsciously frown, unimpressed. There was order to be taken in leaving behind a home, formalities to be met. Rachel checked the television, too, and sure enough--a wide-ranging cable package remained. Her frown deepened. This house was little more than a drain on Winona’s finances, not the clean break of a woman seeking a new path. No wonder Raylan still had his hopes of finding--what? Some further hint that Winona, like him, wasn’t yet ready to let go?

Rachel remembered being sat in the house not too long ago, shadowing Winona after the attempt on her and Raylan's lives. An absurd set of circumstances already, the night culminated in idle conversation, pizza and old movies, and sleeping uneasily in one of the guest rooms while Tim and Raylan kept watch. Frowning, Rachel remembered the morning after, Tim’s gaze never once parting from the back of Raylan’s head, and Raylan being a touch too tender with Winona when she realized Gary had taken off. She regretted obstructing Tim’s explanation two nights ago, and accepting his silence long before that. The whole affair made Rachel lonely, with only her own secrets to carry. 

She fiddled with a roll of packing tape. She counted boxes. She browsed the premium channels. Every so often she would listen for Raylan’s continued presence--that he was still fruitlessly searching for answers, rather than keeled over, incapacitated in pain on the floor of his ex-wife’s bedroom. 

Eventually, boredom won out and she called Tim.

“What’s wrong?” 

_I can’t stop thinking how she did this all wrong,_ Rachel wanted to say, but didn’t. Tim wasn’t asking after her, anyway. “Nothing. I’ve got just a minute, wanted to talk.”

“He asleep?”

“We’re at Winona’s old place. He’s… I don’t know. Looking around.”

Tim made a noise--a grunt not directed at her so much as some interloper on his side of the call--and Rachel could tell he was at work and moving to a quieter corner of the building.

“He seem alright? Otherwise?”

This, Rachel had been waiting for. 

“M-hm.” 

Tim kept his voice level, low, its usual cadence of disinterest. But his questioning gave him away. “Any complaints?”

“M-hm.”

Tim was quiet for a moment, and then--“Did he tell you outright or is that what you’re angling me to do?”

Rachel grinned. Catching Tim off his game was a rare occurrence, so she took the time to enjoy it. “What happened?”

_“Nothing happened._ He had an erection like a redwood and I joked about helping him out. It’s--fine.” 

Tim sounded uncertain, still, like he was waiting for Rachel to come at him with a word of contradiction drawn straight from Raylan himself. Rachel had none; as far as she could tell from Raylan’s side of things, he knew Tim a little differently now, but did not dislike any of it. 

Again, Tim was quiet for a time, and Rachel only heard the opening of doors and passing of faint voices to tell her that Tim had made his way out of the building in an effort to seek a _still greater degree_ of privacy. The next words out of his mouth confirmed her suspicions, as Tim would not have himself overheard offering the earnest admission: “I feel bad about it. Fuck if I know why.”

“You know why,” Rachel reminded him. 

“He didn't ask.”

“He didn't say, _Tim, why do you think my ex-wife left me again? Do you happen to have any unique insight on that front?_ I'm shocked.”

“You too, huh?” Tim rattled off an annoyed sigh. He knew he'd been cowardly the night before, not stating what it was Raylan would surely want to know. Every detail of Winona's hasty exit was still fresh on his mind, and then replayed for him in every moment wasted in silence in Raylan's company. “Really, though. How’s he doing at Winona’s?”

“What, do you expect him to throw himself onto the floor and cry? He’s quiet. He’s angry.” Then, while massaging her brow of a looming headache, “We’ve been here for hours.”

“How are you doing?”

Rachel considered it, tried to put into words why she felt so at odds with her task. Seeing that Raylan didn't cause himself mortal harm was known to them in their capacity as Deputy U.S. Marshals, practically a fixture in their lives. Caring that he'd been hurt and very well could have died was _easy._ Tending to his physical wounds was _practical._ It was everything else that proved near-impossible: discerning his silence, making the appropriate overtures, waiving the pointless gestures. 

And above all, it was _useless_ thinking there was anything to be done for an abandoned man to make him feel less alone that didn't fold in on itself and work to the contrary.

“This is weird, right?” The question was furtive and quiet, and not all to do with the way Rachel asked it, mindful that she was not alone in Winona's house. “I know you were in a hurry to get out of there this morning, but you tagged me in and I feel like I’m punching below my weight.” She hummed, then, before coming back around to the one thought that had been hounding her since she left the hospital with Raylan in her care. It found her, now, unclenched her jaw and forced its way past her teeth. “He needs friends for this.”

Tim’s respectful silence as she sorted her thoughts fell away and was replaced by a titillated, gleeful horror at the conclusion she’d drawn.

“You know what, I bet he felt that. A little niggling in his heart. A piece of his soul just died.”

“God. I’m an asshole.”

_“Yeah,”_ Tim agreed, and Rachel knew from the sudden lightness in his voice that he was grinning wide. “It's great. But do you hear me disagreeing?” He drew in a breath, practically wheezing, as was his custom. Rachel wondered if it was some desert trick, or the product of silent, measured breaths for days on end. 

Tim concluded, “I think we’re… friends enough. Hell, I very nearly gave him a friendly handjob. And he likes you.”

“Excuse me--?”

“Rachel.” It came out slow, expectant. 

_“Tim,”_ She fired back quick, defiant. She decided it wasn't her argument to win--whatever Tim thought Raylan thought of her. She discarded it. “How’s work?”

“Art says hey.” 

Rachel could hear traffic on Tim's end. She placed him as wandering around outside the courthouse, maybe crossing the street towards the cafe she favored. He'd always only get a plain coffee, which unnerved her. The macchiatos were exquisite, but there was no convincing him to stray; “You’re not selling me on foam,” he’d said once, and she’d dropped it. 

Tim continued, “Switching off day-to-day is fine. It’ll keep until we can find that asshole some real friends. How about it, should I just start cold calling people outta the phone book?” He clicked his tongue, suddenly very satisfied with his next thought. “Hey, get Crowder on the horn.”

“Just to satisfy your insatiable need for homicide? No chance.” 

Tim hummed in dismay. 

It was Rachel’s belief that Tim did reach the cafe, but turned away, maybe only stood in the shade of the little green awning. 

“I think,” he started to say, so again Rachel envisioned his privacy, “I’ll be by later. Maybe. Or you could float the idea of you stayin’ the night.”

“I’m not sleeping on that floor,” Rachel insisted. The subject was non-negotiable, but she softened her tone all the same when cutting into Tim’s silence, urging, “Come by tonight.” 

“Sounds like a hot date,” Raylan’s honied voice drifted around the corner, surprising Rachel. 

“That was Tim,” she said, glancing down at the screen to confirm her suspicions--Tim had ended the call, not deciding either way if he would return. 

Raylan stood at an angle above her--the necessary means to favor his good side. Even his trademark easy smirk seemed touched by his injury; it looked like a grimace. “You know, he might just surprise you.” 

“How'd you get down the stairs?” 

“It was this downward motion, real fast.” Raylan gestured with the flat of his hand, then rolled his eyes for Rachel’s benefit. “I been at it for almost half an hour. Easier going down.” 

“Find anything?” Rachel stood up, intending Raylan to take the closest seat on the couch--her own. “Sit a minute.”

Raylan moved slowly and stiffly to the cushion at her left. Rachel kept her place. 

He rested for a time. There was no other word to describe how he took in slow, measured breaths and touched his side like he expected the wound to open up at the slightest movement. He didn’t look like himself, Rachel thought, and it wasn’t just for leaving the hat in his motel room. 

“Everything,” he said, a belated answer to his inquiry. “Just as I’d last seen it. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought abduction.” He waited a beat, as if hoping against hope that something sinister had ripped Winona from his side. Even a terrible fate was better than none. 

Rachel pursed her lips. She never harbored any deep reservations about plainly telling Raylan what had happened, though she realized now it may have been reaching to presume he would accept those facts. 

“She left, Raylan. Packed her car and drove herself away.”

“I know,” Raylan said, but he sounded ambivalent, still. “Clothes… missing from my place. A photo album from her room. She thought about this. Did it. I know that.” 

Raylan’s hair drifted partway over his face. He didn’t-- _couldn’t_ \--yet raise his arm to sweep it back. The effort was still too much of a strain on his pieced-together side. Rachel wondered if _she_ could reach out and do the deed, thinking that it was something Tim might have done-- _gotten away with doing_ \--so long as he piggybacked the gesture on some wry insult, used pragmatism to see his way through.

But it wasn’t there for her to do, and Rachel didn’t know how to feel about that. Excused or denied, she didn’t like the distinction either way.

“I left my husband,” she said. It was the abandoned home more than Raylan that filled her with thoughts of her own failed marriage. “Not so much as… In a hospital bed,” she nearly winced at her own saying so, but there was no softening the truth. “But I did. Leave him. And he never saw it coming.”

“You had a good reason.”

Rachel smiled at that; of course he’d think so. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he had a soft heart.

“None that I could put words to,” she admitted. It was a reality she hadn’t taken to so readily, to start, but in time it found her, and she found her peace with it. “But yeah. In as much as I wanted to do it, and did, it was right.” Rachel gave a shake of her head. She’d irreparably harmed a person by doing no less than what was best for her own self. It was what it was. “Cold comfort to him, though.”

Raylan nodded absently. His mind wasn’t on Rachel or her trials.

“The morning before…” Raylan was slow to explain himself, but Rachel waited him out. “Winona told me she was pregnant. I told her it was the best news--it was. And I promised her I’d get that position at Glynco, or I’d quit, and we’d… figure it out together. It's what she'd been asking for.” 

He frowned, shifted somewhat on the couch, like he couldn’t get comfortable sitting under the weight of these memories, none of them more than two days old. Quietly, he continued: “It really scared her, hearing it from me.” 

“So we got into this fight. About Loretta McCready, of all goddamn things.” Anger sparked like a light in his voice. At least here--at least in _this_ \--Raylan knew he was right. He couldn’t let a young girl take on a Harlan crime family on her own; the Bennetts’ would have no compunction about dealing with a threat, even one making her stand in a training bra. 

“I couldn’t leave it alone, her goin’ off halfcocked to avege her father’s death, some nonsense that’d get her thrown in juvie or worse. Winona said it wasn’t my problem. And she told me--” he laughed, sort of spent, “--that I could go do what it was I saw fit to do, but she couldn’t promise me she’d be waiting for me.” 

Rachel was surprised to see Raylan looking so unabashedly _sad._ She supposed without the hat to obscure his face, there was little separating the set of Raylan’s mouth and the glossy gaze of his tired eyes from the wider world. It seemed a strange thing, this virile cowboy nursing a broken heart like any other sorry soul. 

“And she was there. In the hospital.” Raylan paused, waited out an unspoken, _wasn't she?_ “But she'd gone by then. That's what you were saying.”

It sunk Rachel’s heart that, despite her exact wording, she hadn’t been clear when explaining the situation to Raylan in the hospital. She wondered how long he’d gone before the reality finally settled in him, before he understood what he was waiting on wouldn’t return to him.

“When she left me--before,” Raylan almost cracked a wry smile, there. “I didn’t wonder why.”

“She tell you?” Rachel asked, and imagined the yelling matches tipping over past midnight, then fading into angry, silent mornings. Just picturing them made Rachel feel like an interloper, and she sank a little further into the plush couch cushions in retreat. 

“No,” Raylan admitted. “I just knew. She wasn’t happy. Something about me just didn’t let her have that anymore.”

“Were you?” Rachel couldn’t help but ask, “Happy?”

“Yeah--” Raylan’s first response was hardly his last. “Well. No. Not knowing she wasn’t. I don’t know. Sometimes, not often.” He gave a brief shake of his head, the best he could manage without throwing himself into a spell of dizzying vertigo. “It ain’t so important to me. I didn’t want for it. I knew I loved her.”

“She knew you did,” Rachel said, pushing herself away from the couch and finding a strange cause to sit forward, force this message into Raylan through sheer proximity. “That’s why she couldn’t face you again.” 

Raylan sighed, and the empty house seemed to rattle with it. “What was it you said? Cold comfort.”

-

The office was dead after four, and Tim wasn't planning on staying late anyway, but Art put the bottle of bourbon on his desk, a great amber bottle glowing like a beacon. Tim answered its siren call. 

And although they’d already spoken briefly that morning, Tim didn’t need three guesses after the subject of conversation. Art didn't have the patience to let Tim take his first sip; he asked after Raylan, soured the taste.

“He's doin’ alright, considering.”

Art leaned back into his chair, wrinkling the suit coat draped over the back. It was there, Tim noticed--and not on the rack--because Art had spent the past half hour thinking he ought to head out, check on Raylan himself. His decision to slow his approach and tackle Tim instead showed restraint, first of all. Creeping up behind it was Art’s own pride. He and Raylan had been at odds just a day ago; a little thing like life or death couldn't clear Raylan's slate that easily, though the Deputy was wont to try. 

“Considering he took a bullet and was looking down the barrel at another, or considering his ex-wife left him again while the operating table was still hot?”

Tim looked to be weighing his options, but answered instead in a dull drone, “A hot operating table’d breed bacteria. What kind of shitshow are they running there at Saint Joseph’s, huh?”

To Tim’s utmost dismay, Art didn’t laugh at his joke.

“He’s trying,” Tim conceded. He looked down at his two fingers of bourbon, then met Art’s stare. “All of it. Trying to rest, trying to fend for his own. Can’t really do both. Funny thing about bein’ infirm.” 

He drank slowly from his glass, eyes on Art all the while. Tim expected to be sent on an errand, and he wouldn't be made to believe otherwise. 

Art surrendered, saying, “Raylan had asked me if I’d put in a good word for him to return to Glynco as a firearms instructor.” 

Tim outright balked at the thought. “Seriously? A promotion?”

“That’s what I said,” Art hummed. “I’m thinking it’s all tied up in Winona. I don’t see him leaving the field of his own accord.”

“Gettin’ shot helps.”

“Smartass.” Art was quiet as he took the first sip from his own glass. “See if it’s still something he wants. If you can.”

Tim supposed it was best Art didn't even pretend to be asking. Talking to his Deputies meant giving an order; Tim would have known that much even without the benefit of his previous employment, all the insight gleaned there between a leader and a subordinate. 

That said, Tim was a long way away from _sir, yes sir._

“‘Hey Raylan,’” he proposed, “‘Art asked me to ask you if you’re still after that _grossly undeserved_ Glynco spot, because he feels guilty and might give it to you now.’” 

“Just like that. _Perfect.”_ Art couldn’t roll his eyes and drain half his glass at the same time; he gave priority to the latter.

Tim watched him, knowing he was building himself up for something, filling his stomach with two fingers of bourbon like he meant the words to float atop of the gathering waters, reach his lips. 

Art said, “Winona came to see me that morning. Told me where Raylan had gone, said we should go after him like an errand.”

“We did,” Tim said, if only because the edge of Art’s words dragged like he’d forgotten them.

_“After_ I told her we wouldn’t,” Art said, a sorry admission of his own failure, first, before the acknowledgment that they’d erred on the side of caution, and followed Raylan down his rabbit hole. The end result did not seem to assuage Art’s guilt; he’d still spent half the day convinced he wouldn’t intervene on Raylan’s behalf, and Raylan had the evidence to show for Art’s convictions.

Tim shrugged in response. It was a wordless denial of Art’s guilt, of anyone’s complicity in the crime--even his own. 

Art saw right through it, called bullshit.

“You spent the whole day frowning at your computer screen, and I'm not even sure you turned it on, first.” Art let the bourbon hugging his glass spin, circle the glass, ride the edges. Tim tried not to follow its movement, lest he be seen with a hungry look in his eye. Art’s attention was elsewhere, all the same. “If you're trying to figure out who to blame, don't. It's not a thing that can be done.”

“I don't know about that,” Tim demurred dryly. Art was plenty aware of Winona’s successful disappearing act carried out on his watch. 

“Shit,” Art grumbled, realization overcoming him like a slap to the face. “Your gun--”

Tim couldn’t help but smile--just a small curl of his lips as he watched his boss grapple with yet another failure of oversight. Tim put him out of his misery, saying, “I turned my rifle and sidearm over to Nelson when we were still kickin’ up dust at the Bennett place. You probably got the paperwork sittin’ on your desk.” Tim nodded to the mess. Sure enough, under the incident report with a wet stain from the bottom of his glass, there was Tim’s paperwork, cited and signed by Deputy Dunlop himself. 

Art didn’t make a fool of himself looking for it, though. He stared at Tim, uncertain. 

“Seriously. You wanna search me?”

“For a head wound, maybe.” 

Tim didn't blink at the insinuation, and the wording didn't throw him, either. “I know the rules.” 

Art had his hand on the bottle again, but moved to return it to its drawer. He made it a point not to toast this sort of thing. “So that’s five, then?”

Tim didn’t smile, didn’t breathe, didn’t blink. 

“I’m not counting.” 

“Five people you’ve shot under my supervision.” 

There was nothing remorseful in his tone, nothing pitying. Art knew the realities of the work they did. The number, though, seemed to have gotten away from him. He seemed to have had higher expectations for himself, but not noticed their swift departure when necessity trumped care, and he let Tim loose like it was a chore to always hold him back. 

“Five that you know of,” Tim said, never one to make things easier for himself. A crease drove itself between his eyes, making strange company for the bemused smile that went with it. “You don’t have to worry about me.” 

He didn’t add, _Taking one, myself._ However Art would hear it, Tim hoped he knew. 

And Art knew this much: Tim really meant this. And in saying so, he saw himself as relieving Art of some unnecessary burden. Art supposed Tim even expected it to work; he’d already lived a life where his word was trusted emphatically, where bullshitting cost lives and torpedoed missions. 

He chuckled, looked kindly upon his Deputy like one might favor a child’s gung-ho attempt at a new talent--painting or basketball or lying. Art felt as if he was watching Tim try something for the very first time. 

“You sound about one second away from telling me how long you’ve been at this.”

“Thought I’d save my breath,” Tim mused, and stood. He set the empty glass on Art’s desk. “I’ll tell Raylan what you said.” 

-

Still uncertain if Tim would be joining them, Rachel suggested eating out someplace. Raylan refused, deciding he didn’t want to be made a spectacle, slouching in some booth and slowly drawing his fork to his mouth as if it weighed thirty pounds. Rifling through Winona’s bedroom had sufficiently tired him out, however, so any further activities were off the docket. A meal had in the quiet of his motel room was what he wanted. 

“Bathroom,” Raylan said when they entered, and he seemed to be resisting Rachel’s efforts to lead him to bed. “It’s fine. I got this one.” 

“Holler, if…” Rachel waved a hand, indicating catastrophe. 

“Oh, you bet.”

Raylan excused himself to the bathroom. His first instinct was to disguise his purpose there, but rather than run a shower he was not equipped to take on his own, he drew the faucet at the sink, hoping it was enough to drown him out. 

Then, sitting gingerly on a closed toilet seat, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and called Winona.

He'd tried earlier, back at her house and the second after Rachel was out of earshot. Tried a dozen times after that. Winona never once picked up, but that had been hours ago, and Raylan was itching to try again. For all their discussion about love and the noble reasons to abandon it, Raylan was not satisfied putting his assumptions to Winona's lips. Her answer and his were radically opposed; he wanted to bend to her will, she had bent to her own.

Raylan heard the call go through, then ring out uselessly from the confines of his own motel room.

He moved faster than he felt capable of as he stepped out of the bathroom and followed the line of Rachel's tight expression. It led him to the small duffle bag Tim had left behind, a meager little thing housing a change of clothes and a shaving kit. The lining was so thin and worn in places that Raylan could see the the glowing screen of Winona's iPhone from where it lay near the top, a recent addition. 

He retrieved it, still ringing. 

“She left it behind,” Rachel explained. 

“And Tim’s got it,” Raylan said, not bothering to dress it up like a question. He felt something tighten in his chest, and though his hand instinctively moved to the stitching in his side, he knew that wasn’t it.

“Don’t bullshit me, Rachel. I want to know the whole story, here.”

Rachel shook her head, said coolly, “You can ask Tim.”

Raylan lost his patience, shouted at her, “Then get his sorry ass back here!” 

In response, Rachel did not move an inch from where she sat at the end of the bed. She neither blinked nor balked at Raylan’s outburst. 

“You keep giving me orders, I'm going to get the impression you mean for me to follow them.” Rachel cocked her head in challenge. “You'd better rethink that strategy _real quick.”_

Raylan drew back into himself, quieted. “Tim didn’t tell you.” Another question, but only just.

“He started to, the night of. I said it wasn’t my business.” 

Raylan sighed in frustration. “I get that your intention here was to spare me some level of humiliation,” he said it slow, like he meant to command every word in a level tone, “But it didn’t quite pan out.”

“Maybe you should have a protocol for when your personal life craters and we’re stranded in the pit,” Rachel said, still smarting. This was twice now Raylan had raised his voice with her. Circumstances being what they were, she knew better than to look too deeply into matters. But her own pride wouldn’t allow for excusing a man’s behavior _for_ him.

“This has nothing to do with either of you.”

Rachel shelved her hands on her hips. “You think Tim went to four gas stations hunting down that ice cream you like because Winona running off under his nose had nothing to do with him? Didn’t bother him? God. And why the hell am I here?”

“I don't have to answer for your conscience, Rachel.” 

Raylan moved slowly towards the bed, and took the side opposite of Rachel. His descent was echoed by grunts of pain until he’d fully reclined. 

They kept that way--alone, quiet--until Tim arrived almost half an hour later. He’d swung by his own place that morning, but the shower and change of clothes showed the wear of a day at the office. His olive green dress shirt was untucked and partially unbuttoned, showing his throat and a flash of undershirt.

He had a bottle of Wild Turkey in hand. It was a new bottle, but Tim had already taken a cut--just a taste to get him through the door. 

Rachel noticed. 

“Thirsty, are we?”

“Some of us had to work today,” Tim said, quick to dole out his usual excuse.

“I think we’re all going to need some of that,” she said, and crossed the room to recover a few plastic cups. She caught Tim’s eye as she did, communicating a warning for the impending onslaught. 

It took the entirety of their conversation for Raylan to sit up in bed, then stand and address Tim: “You and me are gonna talk.”

There was no mistaking the change in the room. Rather than bungle it, the hitch in Raylan’s step and the perpetual grimace on his face only added to his authoritative turn. Whether he’d figured things out or only knew the explanation to be full of holes, Tim did not fool himself into thinking there was still a way out to be found, here. Instead of looking to Rachel for confirmation, Tim only nodded.

To Rachel, Raylan added, “You should stay for this. It’s your business, too. Get an earful.”

“Keep practicing,” she threw back. “That still has the stink of an order.”

At the table, she’d readied three plastic cups, even pouring a splash for Raylan, who likely needed it most.

It was a strange way to stave off a massacre: providing alcohol to the participants.

Tim kept near the door, and Rachel returned to her seat at the end of the bed. Raylan’s efforts to cross the room and insert himself between the pair were slow, but ultimately successful. He put himself clear into Tim’s line of sight and left Rachel feeling like an observer. 

“When I said to you I didn’t understand how she--” Raylan stopped himself, commanded composure when he felt nothing less than rage and twisting betrayal. He laid a hard stare on Tim, forced the younger man to shoulder it. That Tim didn’t quake under the pressure only angered Raylan further. “You know something about that, don’t you?”

“She drove here from the hospital,” Tim said. “I was with her. We were gonna pick up some clothes for you. She--uh. Got away from me.”

“It’s your goddamn _job--”_

“I know. And I followed her.”

Raylan just stared, his expression drawn between confused and aghast. “Well that ain’t ominous as fuck all. Tim, _what the hell.”_

Tim had had half a dozen plans pass through his mind as he’d traced her. He imagined catching her turning around, rethinking how she’d left things. He’d return her phone so that she and Raylan could talk, at least. But she didn’t have a change of heart, and to add insult to injury, finding himself staked out near Winona’s sister’s place imparted one on Tim.

“Nothing came of it,” Tim said. “Obviously.” 

“Obviously. And you didn't tell me any of this, why? Because _it was fun_ to watch me not know shit about it?”

Tim glanced down at his empty glass. He didn’t remember throwing it back. “It wasn't fun.”

Raylan closed in on the space between them. “You’re gonna have to do better than that.” 

So Tim answered him. He gave Raylan everything and all at once. It felt like too big a play to make in such a concealed space, and Tim saw it blowing up between the three of them. 

“She asked if there was a chance you could have died that day--I lied, said no, you caught a stray bullet but nothing was after you, specifically. Which is always a lie, and she knew better than to believe me.” Tim watched as that one landed, and Raylan looked ashamed for it. 

“Then she started in on that night you and me and her all pretended we didn't see each other at that bluegrass bar off the interstate, saying she didn't want to go public with you. And then she started crying,” Tim gestured with the flat of his hand, “Right where Rachel's sitting. Said she didn't know what she was doing, that she loved you but wasn't made for this. Said she was pregnant. Said she worried if she didn't leave you now, she'd be thinking about it every day until she could.”

With more swiftness and power than his body could stand, Raylan threw a punch. With it, he struck Tim in the face. Tim, who had all but presented himself for the honor. The impact blew him back a step, knocking Tim’s elbow against the motel room door, and causing him to grip his plastic cup so tightly so as to make a fist and--with it--a response. 

But Tim never did respond in turn. He finished what it was he’d meant to tell Raylan: “I didn't know what to say to make her stick around. I'm sorry.” 

He grimaced, more for the fact that he’d just apologized to the man who’d clipped him hard on the jaw than out of pain--though the latter was considerable. All he had to contend with presently was a dull throb. The stinging, grinding ache would come later. He worked his jaw until he heard it give a satisfying pop; better to test it now than to let it settle and swell. “You tear your stitches with that one?”

“No,” Raylan said, sounding disappointed. It must have felt like it, because he lifted his shirt to check.

“Pity,” was Tim’s grim reply. He could take a punch, compartmentalize the pain. Red didn’t rise to his cheeks, tears didn’t sting his eyes; if biology were on his side, he’d deny the eventual swelling and bruising, too. It seemed a strange skill as-is, with Tim tempering the instinct to fight back. He touched the side of his face and felt the wet hurt of split skin. His gaze found Raylan’s and he asked, incredulous, “Did you _seriously_ hit me with your rings on?” 

Something broke across Raylan’s face--first, he registered the absurdity of the situation. His lips parted as if there was any way to answer for it. Then, he finally felt an ounce of shame at having yelled at one colleague and punched another. It was a familiar look of contrition, one Raylan often wore, but ultimately shown too late. 

“Y’all are idiots,” Rachel said, looking embarrassed for having witnessed what she did. 

Tim bent to collect the plastic cup he'd dropped. “I'm gonna get some fucking ice,” he grumbled, and was halfway out the door when Raylan caught his attention. 

“Get me some, too,” he said, as if thoughtfully guessing that the notion of sharing ice between his jaw and Raylan's offending hand wasn't first on Tim’s mind.

Tim tipped his head back slightly, and seemed to be counting to ten. _“Sure.”_

When he'd gone, Rachel left the bed to refill her cup with another two fingers of Wild Turkey. 

“I can’t believe you hit him.” _I can’t believe I watched._

Raylan shrugged the shoulder on his good side. “You gonna tell Art?”

_“Art_ is not the pressing issue here, Raylan.” Rachel turned to face him, but Raylan was inspecting his hand, tracing the tendons, feeling out the ache associated with what he'd done. 

Raylan shook his head, almost mystified. “Tim won’t tell. Hell, he’ll probably cover for me. Wonder why that is.”

Raylan was being spiteful, Rachel knew, because his side was being held together with thread and staples, but the same couldn’t be done for his pride. 

Coolly, she said, “He should have hit you back.” 

Raylan picked up Winona’s phone from the dresser. In the missed call log, he found his number filled the screen, and then some.

“How much did she hate me,” he murmured, “That she had to leave so completely.”

“She didn’t hate you,” Rachel said, and this time her argument wasn’t made with a gentle tone. She was frustrated and embarrassed, not liking one bit that Raylan couldn’t accept his new reality. She hated that she couldn’t outright say so, the implication being that her own ex-husband had wallowed in this kind of bullshit, even if she hadn’t been around to witness it. So who was she to judge?

Raylan gave another minuscule shake of his head, a strange cousin to the violent jerking motion Tim had made just moments ago. “I’m not saying she’s wrong.”

Rachel closed her eyes and drained her glass. “Don’t be morose. It’s not a good look for you. Sort of on par with how you look when you're being a complete asshole.” 

She watched Raylan’s slow shuffle back to his side of the bed, and noted that he’d left Winona’s phone behind. He laid himself down to rest upright against several pillows, not under any false assumptions about deserving Rachel’s aid in doing so. 

“I don’t think you’d recognize me, otherwise.”


End file.
